


Runaway Mate

by SometimesyougettheBear



Series: The Runaway Mate AU [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, BAMF Stiles, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Torture, a tiny bit of domestic violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 01:49:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 18
Words: 54,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3272303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SometimesyougettheBear/pseuds/SometimesyougettheBear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is brilliant. He's one of the youngest executive forensic accountants at the well-known security firm Baroff & Sons. He's the one everyone hates, who owns disgustingly expensive furniture, always somehow wins the cases without trying, clean cut, attractive. It's a charmed life and Stiles means to enjoy every minute of it. Until Derek Hale walks into his room and says one word that brings his entire life to a standstill<br/>"Omega"<br/>Now Stiles is running for his life and Derek  is hot on the chase.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. And so it begins

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Deutsch available: [Runaway Mate (Translation)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4672976) by [CutiePantsu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CutiePantsu/pseuds/CutiePantsu)



The wooden desk gleamed. It was polished mahogany straight from the Amazonian forests in Brazil, he’d had to pay extra so that the customs officials would turn a blind eye. Well, you know, yes the Amazon rainforests were important, but hey, he’d also needed a new table, and he was investing in a developing country, so it was almost charity. His desk was bare except for a 28,000 Ikepod hourglass. He carefully tipped the hourglass and watched the 8 million nanoballs fall to the bottom. With a sigh, he fell back into his custom designed leather seat, massaging his back comfortably. He smiled a little bit, twirling his gold fountainhead pen as he examined the contract and keeping his legs spread wide, so the omega under his desk, could do its job. It suckled at his dick in a comfortingly steady rhythm.

It was _good_ to be at the top.

“Stiles?”  Another associate walked into the office.

Stiles nodded his head for the associate to continue without looking up from the contract he was examining.

“Derek Hale is here, the client you wanted to see?” the associate continued ending with a question in his voice.

“Oh, yes. Tell him I’ll be with him in a second,” Stiles murmured absentmindedly.

The associate walked away. Stiles carefully tapped the omega under his desk twice and it disengaged from his cock. The omega was a nice perk of his position. He was an executive forensic accountant for Boroff & Sons, one of the best banking firms in the New York City Area. Not only would Boroff & Sons invest your money, they also hired top computer programmers and analytical thinkers who could find stolen money and uncover Ponzi schemes with nearly inhuman accuracy. The associates at Boroff & Sons were so good, even the FBI often hired their workers as consultants. Stiles was one of the best in his division, and certain bonuses came with the territory, like the use of a docile omega for his hard ons and the bonus salary of somewhere around 2 million a year, but eh, probably more than that when you counted stock options. At 28, Stiles was on the top of his game, a veritable success, with very few skeletons in his closet.

He left the door and headed down the hall to the room used to meet new clients. The Hales were one of the richest families in the United States, heir to a multi-billion dollar shipping fortune and one of the oldest werewolf lines in New York. The Hales had contacted him a week ago about trying to find their uncle, who had embezzled about a quarter of their funds and escaped to who knows where. They were looking for the best forensic accountant in the area to find the money, and well, Stiles was the best, not that he wasn’t trying to be humble or anything.

But it is a strange way how the world goes, and when Stiles entered that room he expected to sit down to a normal conversation, gather some important information on his note pad and walk out. He didn’t realize that by the end of one meeting, he would lose everything, his apartment, his social status, his job, just because of one unwary sniff, one word.

No, Stiles had no idea what awaited him in that room, or he would never have entered.

Pulling open the glass door, Stiles flashed a smile at Derek Hale, who had brought his sister Laura Hale for moral support.

Derek Hale was dark haired man, with dark eyes, a scruffy, though well groomed beard, and a brooding air. He looked around thirty years of age. Beside him his sister had piercing hazel eyes, a strong sharp nose and a smile filled with so many brilliant white teeth one could not help but think of the maw of a great white shark. Both of them sitting together made an intimidating picture, but Stiles wasn’t that worried.

 _“Stupid Alphas”,_ he thought to himself.

Stiles sat down in one of the disturbingly uncomfortable gray swivel chairs, “So what can I do for you today Derek?”

As he spoke, he saw Derek’s eyes widen and Derek sniffed the air again, like a mangy wolf.

“No,” Derek said slowly, “it cannot be”

Stiles furrowed his brow, “What?”

Derek replied slowly, as if the words were being pulled out of him, “You smell like an omega….mmmmm….my omega……”

“Excuse me please?” Stiles repeated solicitously, as the sweat increased on his brow. He needed to buy some time.

Derek walked over to Stiles and pinned the unresisting man to the wall and sniffed at Stiles’s neck.

“You smell so good, how did you manage to hide this scent all these years?”

Stiles stared into the eyes of his new-found Alpha.

_Oh shit._

He had been caught.

His 1,000 dollar suit was soaked in sweat and his life was over.

All in all not the greatest day.


	2. The chase is on

Of course Stiles ran.

I mean what would you do if everything you were had been upended in one day, your entire livelihood possibly destroyed?

Luckily Stiles had prepared for this eventuality. He shoed the office omega to another executive, giving it orders to please the vice president  of financial research, after all he did owe that man  a favor. He locked his door, and threw the pinstriped suit, the gold watch, and the cufflinks all to the floor. He grabbed a blue hoodie from the closet, jeans and his backpack.

When you’re living a lie, you have to prepare for eventualities. Every day Stiles packed a bag filled with $20,000 dollars in cash, a black credit card with no limit, fake licenses and passports, scent blockers, heat suppressants (which were, of course, illegal), a tracphone with a pre-paid card. And a change of clothes.

Stiles was lacing up his sneakers when Derek banged on the door. He tried to keep his breathing even, now was not the time for a panic attack.

He grabbed a bag of the bombs and said goodbye, quickly to his beautiful desk and his lovely Ikepod hourglass. Man, he had bragged about that hourglass so much….

Oh well.

Opening the door, Stiles threw a garlic scent bomb right into the were-wolf’s face. Then, he grabbed a flare and lit it in the middle of the hallway, hopefully, it would blind everyone in the office to him running as fast as he could. Stiles ran down the stairs, all ten flights, panting and puffing when he reached the bottom of the stairs and then he exited the door straight to a taxi.

“Heathcliff Airport,” Stiles ordered handing the cabbie the black credit card, “ and step on it, if you get me there in record time, there’s a hundred dollar bonus with your name on it”.

While the man drove like a madman, weaving through NYC traffic, Stiles’s brain whirred.

During his childhood with adhd, Stiles had been a terrible student, unable to deal with the jumps and leaps his mind made, constantly moving from one thought train to another. That was until at the age of 17, when he’d picked up the Ound method of meditation. Stiles closed his eyes and imagined his feelings, terror, shock, horror, worry, falling into a little black box he kept locked up in the back of his mind.

Then he imagined the steps he needed to follow as pictures in one of his interconnected webs, the webs he kept in his home office which joined the pieces of information he’d discovered in a forensic case with strings of red, green and yellow.

So, what does he know?

Derek has only a limited amount of time to find his omega. In three months, if Derek did not find the omega he had imprinted on, he would die a painful, miserable death as his brain slowly shut down. So there was no hope that Derek would just let him go.

If Derek is searching for him, the first place they would expect him to go would be his house, to gather phone cards, ID’s, passports, citizenship documents. They would not expect him to be as prepared as he was. So he couldn’t go back home.

Then, they’d expect him to head for the nearest airport in NYC. Either the Heathcliff or the Air ANK. And the airport attendants would all easily remember him as a young man who was travelling with nothing but a backpack. Security cameras would show which plane he boarded, they would pinpoint where he was going and have a car waiting to meet him when he landed in the country of his choice

Oh. No. shit.

So what could he do?

“Change of plans,” Stiles announced to the driver, “we need to head to Penn Station, 34th Street.”

 

**Derek**

Derek opened his eyes to a hospital room. His mouth still burned from the garlic bomb the man—his mate, had thrown at him. And his heart ached to know that Stiles had ran away… from him. Laura sat on the edge of Derek’s bed, her presence a warm comfort.

“Good, you’re awake. I’ll get the doctor” she announced as he opened his eyes.

A bespectacled gray haired man entered the room. Derek sniffed, “Alpha”, he thought. Derek had always had a particularly acute nose. A nose that could cut through scent blockers and heat suppressants to distinguish the delicate aroma of the man underneath. _Stiles…_

The alpha doctor cleared his throat. “Yes, doctor?” Derek answered, only half listening.

“I was saying that you have only three months to find your mate. Your Korsakoff gland is already swelling and your scent has begun to change, marking you as a mated Alpha. The other option we have is to break the nascent bond forming, leaving you unable to mate, but still alive” the doctor finished.

“No,” Derek refused flatly. He had always dreamt of this moment, what alpha had not, to be able to find a sweet smelling, willing, mate who complemented you perfectly, whom you could not help but love. The amazing sex mates would have, where the omega could not resist the alpha, could not help but wet its pants with soppy slick, and the orgasms were fantastic, explosive. In a society where divorce broke up anywhere from 70-80% of marriages, the strong bonds between alphas and omegas were legendary and never resulted in divorce or separation. He was a good alpha, he would not stop Stiles from working or withhold the finer things in life, and he would find and convince his mate to stay.

 

 

**Stiles**

Stiles sat in the back of the taxi, straightening up as soon as he entered Penn Station.

Stiles looked at the cabbie and knew he had a difficult decision to make.

He could kill the driver. After all he didn’t want to be seen, and the driver could be easily identified from the security cameras outside of his firm, but Stiles really didn’t want to do anything messy like, you know, killing people. He was an accountant, not a butcher. So Stiles made a few quick calculations in his head, about 13,000 taxis in New York City, 14% of Taxi drivers were from Bangladesh and this guy had a fairly common name, adding in casual racism which would make all Bangla drivers seem the same, maybe it might be more difficult to find this guy than expected.

In about 10 seconds, Stiles decided.

 “Here’s 5,000 dollars. We’re friends here, right?” Stiles smiled, “As a friend, I’d advise you to lay low for the next, 3 or 4 months, ok, don’t talk to anyone cause, you know, I wouldn’t want to send my buddies to look for your family, in Jackson Heights, is it?”

The taxi driver turned a shade paler, his eyes wide, as Stiles placed 5,000 dollars in cash into his hands. Stiles grabbed his backpack, watching the man carefully drive away.

And sighed in relief.

Jackson Heights was just a guess, there were two other neighborhoods in NYC known for being majority Bangladeshi; Kensington and Hillside Avenue. He said a silent prayer of thanks to his good luck, and of course, Wikipedia.

Stiles bought a bus ticket under an assumed name; Mathew Wilson. One of the most popular names in New York City and one of the most popular surnames in New York City. At any point, it was highly possible that there were other Mathew Wilson’s in the area or on the train with him. From Connecticut, he’d  buy a luggage stuffed with clothes and other irrelevant stuff, catch the Air one flight to Argentina, Buenos Aires, and lay low for a couple of weeks, then off to Latvia and finally to some buddies in England. Hopefully by then 3 months would have passed, the mate he never wanted would be dead and he would be free to build another identity and enjoy his life on his own terms.

He shuddered thinking of the OCS, Omega Correction Services. If he was caught, he could be held in their custody indefinitely until Derek picked him up, then Stiles knew, according to the office omega  he kept to “warm his cock”, he would be _trained_ … well tortured and raped repeatedly until he lost all sense of self. After that he’d be shipped to his new alpha in a crate, who would then own him, legally, emotionally, physically. Stiles closed his eyes and leaned against the bus window trying to curb his panic. He absolutely couldn’t go to the alpha, he had to escape. And he would never let himself be found.

 

 


	3. The Act of Choosing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Stiles runs to Buenos Aires, reconnects with an old flame, and thinks seriously about choice.

_So you’re an omega who has been claimed by an alpha you want **Nothing** to do with. Place a capital N in that nothing, bold it, underline it, cannot make that no any more emphatic._

_Since your pesky little society doesn’t really care about ideas such as omega choice or to be honest offer any rights or protections for omegas sticking around to see where the romance may take you is not, well, not really an option._

_So like any normal person, you run._

_But where to?_

_Well, if you’re Stiles Stilinski the answer is simple: into the arms of an old lover._

Buenos Aires. A city of 2.89 million people, heavy, bustling. Gorgeous skyscrapers dot the landscape, their thin spires punching against the cobalt sky. Here and there winding cobblestone streets cover the roads of San Telmo. Old European houses are scattered throughout the city, relics of a colonial past long gone. Past, present and future meld seamlessly in Buenos Aires.

After beckoning a black and yellow radio taxi, Stiles found himself in the trendy neighborhood of Las Cañitas. He wandered up and down the wide concrete sidewalks adorned by trees soaking up the ever present sun, looking like just another _gringo_ tourist. After a few minutes he came to an unassuming red brick brownstone, the number 49 glowing on the door in bright gold letters.

Stiles took a moment to steady himself before knocking on the door. After two light raps, a tall man with laughing brown eyes, a wide expressive face, and a ready smile opened the door. Felipe looed delighted to see the bedraggled Stiles at his doorstep. He kissed Stiles softly on both cheeks in a European way, “Stiles! My favorite gringo, I have been expecting you! How are you?”

Stiles allowed one corner of his mouth to raise in a half-smile, “As good as I can be. And you?”

Felipe looked at Stiles with eyes alit with laughter, “dying with sadness from missing you, mi amante. But now that you’re here color has come back to my life again,” Felipe exclaimed, placing a hand on his chest.

Stiles chuckled, “As ridiculously overdramatic as ever I see”, he chided his friend fondly.

Felipe shook his head with mock sorrow, “Everyone’s a critic,” and opened his arms to Stiles. Stiles dropped his brown luggage on the doorstep and let himself be swept into a bone crushing hug from one of his oldest friends.

_“Everything is going to be okay_ ” Stiles told himself, “I’m safe”.

* * *

 

**Derek**

The battered coffee machine was still running, red light on, stained with brown spots from years of use, a filter holding ground coffee beans lay in the filter basket. The aroma wafted up to Derek’s sensitive nose, _sugary sweet with extra condensed milk and coffee mate. Disgusting._

Oh, well, to each his own.

Entering his mate’s apartment was a revelation.

After Derek had registered himself as Stiles’s alpha with the alpha/omega Task Force, he had been given access to Stiles’s apartments, lock boxes and granted custody over all of Stiles’s belongings. After all, now that he was Stiles’s alpha, everything the man owned was his also, because omegas belonged kneeling at the feet of an alpha. The thought of Stiles, his rebellious mate, kneeling sweetly by his feet, head rubbing against his thigh made him hard. He staggered his breathing in an effort to get himself under control and looked around the apartment.

The man he had met at the firm and talked to over the phone was clipped, precise, calm and exacting. Entering Stiles’s apartment he had fully expected to see stainless steel walls, minimalist furniture, a Keuring coffee machine; but, no, Stiles’s apartment was messy.

The living room was circled with comfortable green beanbag chairs circled around a monstrous television connected to a gaming console. On Stiles’s television cabinet, Halo 3 rested comfortably side by side with Braid. Stiles was a study in opposites. His closet contained three piece suits made by the most expensive designers money could buy in crisp condition, but on his bed lay a well-worn red American Giant Hoodie, splattered with rain, coffee stains and dirt. Dirty sneakers hidden under his bed were scuffed with mud and reeked of sweet. Derek buried his nose deep into the worn red hoodie, catching the sweetness of Stiles’s fragrance, the notes of his mate’s scent tugged at his heartstrings. Stiles had constructed a life here, a lonely one possibly, but a life nonetheless. He could read the rhythm of Stiles’s days in the beaten brown leather couch, stuffing nearly exposed, permanent dent in the center in the shape of Stiles’s butt, in the fridge filled with milk and a takeout bag of curly fries. Huge windows dominated nearly every room, looking out onto the Manhattan skyline and the bustling city beneath, humans scurrying to and fro like little mice trapped in a maze. Stiles had expensive taste, but yes, his mate loved the simple things of life.

In his bedroom, Stiles’s bedspread was unmade, coverlet haphazardly hanging to one side. _So Stiles is not nearly as careful and polished as he pretends to be_ , Derek mused.

Derek turned to the nearby wall and gasped in surprise, there his picture was pinned, at the center of a web of interconnected strings of red, yellow and green. Connected to his picture on the left by a thin yellow strand was Peter’s face. Underneath Stiles had written: Talia Hale’s prodigal brother? in black and then underlined the world prodigal. Then, Peter’s picture was connected other men’s picture by a web of red strings. “Associate 1- John Doe”, Stiles had written under one man’s photo, then a note—seen leaving Peter’s apartment at dusk the day before his disappearance. The wall continued on and on, filled with useful and interesting information Derek had not told Stiles or even knew Stiles had. Even more, reading through the wall gave Derek a chance to understand how Stiles’s mind worked. In some places, Stiles made huge leaps of intuition, in others Stiles pieced together facts to make an inevitable conclusion. After half an hour of reading through the wall and parsing the information, Derek came to one undeniable conclusion.

His mate was brilliant.

The alpha inside of him preened in pleasure. He couldn’t wait to have such a prize by his side. Very few omegas were intelligent. In schools, young children were taught that the average omega I.Q. hovered somewhere around 80, which is why most omegas needed alphas to take care of them, to guide them, and protect them. Obviously his omegas was special, arose among thorns. He just had to find Stiles and convince the man to become his.

Derek looked at his reflection in the mirror. He knew he was handsome, rich, kind, and voted as the most eligible alpha bachelor in the Tristate area three times in a row. Maybe his mate was overwhelmed with feelings of self- doubt? Perhaps Stiles ran because he didn’t think he was good enough. Poor thing.

Derek quietly sniffed the air, well, it had taken him two weeks to recuperate from the scent bomb and the traumatic bonding between himself and the mysterious omega. So Stiles had a head start, but Derek knew he would find his mate….soon.

Derek tugged at the bond. Between mates, one could usually sense the other’s presence, he felt Stiles as a faint presence from very far away. He sent his thoughts through the bond…..

_I’m coming for you darling. See you soon._

He hoped Stiles could hear him.

* * *

 

**Stiles**

Being with Felipe was…. nice. There was no other word for it.

Stiles and Felipe had meant when Stiles was just 23, fresh out of college and still wet behind the ears. In his position as a junior accountant Stiles was required to travel to different countries to understand the way other banking systems worked and also work with the branches of Boroff & Sons in other countries. Felipe was a midlevel banker at a competitor’s firm and their relationship had begun with a playful rivalry. Sex with Felipe was good, Felipe was unfailingly kind and considerate and Stiles had felt his heart open up. But Stiles knew he was an omega and he couldn’t trust Felipe or anyone with that secret. So as Stiles moved further up in the company, he took a position with less international travel and told Felipe that “what was happening between wasn’t going to work”. Felipe was heartbroken, Stiles was hurting, but after a year of grief, they had remained good, albeit distant, friends.

 In Buenos Aires, Stiles and Felipe settled down into the effortless companionship of two close friends. Stiles had told Felipe that he was enjoying a much needed vacation from work for a few weeks and Felipe accepted Stiles’s excuse unblinkingly. Stiles felt like he could stay forever, trading sarcastic barbs with  Felipe with easy affection, waking up to the sun spilling into his white coffee cup and a sky so blue it seemed too precious to be real, exploring the nightclubs around Buenos Aires and drinking bottle after bottle of  artisanal wine. By day, while Felipe was at work, Stiles would visit museums or galleries to look at new art installations. By night, Felipe would take Stiles out on an adventure, sometimes to a new bar, sometimes to an interesting café or often to sit on the roof of some skyscraper, listening to the chirping of crickets over the midnight sky, horns and brilliant traffic lights glowing in the background.

“Was it possible to be running for your life and yet be the happiest you’ve ever been?” Stiles wondered.

Felipe was open, easy, and free. Stiles felt comforted by Felipe’s snoring in the room next to his. When Felipe would turn one of those mega kilowatt smiles towards him, it felt like the sun was shining only for him. At night, in his empty bed, Stiles found himself hurting in a way he had never allowed himself to hurt before.  He realized he still loved Felipe.

In another life, he would have had the chance to choose a man like Felipe.

In another life, he would be happy.

Restlessly Stiles drifted off to sleep. In the morning, Stiles yawned, and padded to the bathroom with sleepy eyes around 10:00. Felipe had already left and the aroma of fresh coffee wafted out from the kitchen. Stiles looked at the mirror, ran a hand through his mussed up brown hair, and opened the cabinet to retrieve his toothbrush.

Wait…

He glanced at the mirror a second time and his heart sunk in horror. Right there on a creamy white shoulder dotted with moles, a lump was swelling. His Korsakoff gland was rising marking him as a mated omega. Oh. No.

* * *

 

Stiles wore heavier shirts in the upcoming days as bonding sickness began to hit him full throttle. While alphas felt the worst of the bonding sickness, (omegas needed to be able to survive and carry on the species) omegas still sickened too if they were away from their mate. Right now Stiles felt a terrible nausea that gripped him at odd hours of the day, his skin was clammy to the touch, he spent more days in bed playing angry birds on his phone and watching bad telenovelas. Felipe was worried, but he had no idea what was wrong, perhaps Stiles had eaten something bad and come down with the flu, he suggested. When he found Stiles throwing up at 3 a.m. in the wee hours of dawn, he insisted that Stiles see a doctor.

_No, it’s okay_ , Stiles had demurred, _nothing a little OJ wouldn’t fix._ It was late that night when Stiles felt his mate through the bond for the first time, “ _I’m coming for you darling. See you soon”_

Stiles gripped his sheets, heart skyrocketing in horror. He cuddled into a corner of his bed in fetal position and did not sleep until morning.

The first thing Stiles felt the next morning was gentle hands shaking his shoulder. From far away he heard Felipe’s voice, “Good morning Sleeping Beauty,” Felipe greeted Stiles’s exhausted face.

“Or maybe I should have called you Sleeping Ugly” Felipe amended, “you really don’t look so hot, Stiles. I’m worried.You need to see a doctor.Today”

Stiles knew he could never see a doctor for his bond sickness. Every doctor was duty bound to report a runaway omega to the OCS, who would then reunite the omega with its alpha. After all, omegas were entrusted with a special duty to help create and educate the next generation of citizens. And an alpha could not go too long without his or her omega before becoming deeply ill or dying. So in order to protect both the life of the alpha and of course do his duty to the state, any doctor he saw would be honor bound to report him. And that would be a disaster.

“I just had a bad dream, Felipe,” Stiles lied unconvincingly, “Come on man, you’re not my mother, let it be.”

Felipe frowned, “Stiles, I get the feeling there’s something you’re not telling me,”

Stiles knew he had only a few seconds to escape notice, “Seriously Felipe, I’ve only had the flu for a few days, it’s not like I’m working as a spy for the Al-Qaeda” Stiles joked.

Felipe gave him a small smile, “Nah, man I always imagined you as a purist Salafi or a Sufi, you know, ecstatic twirling, writing mystical love poetry,”

Stiles looked at Felipe with a touch of sadness, “No, I’d be Omar Khayyam, “a loaf of bread beneath the bough, a flask of wine, a book of verse”

“and thou beside me, singing in the wilderness” Felipe added

“Oh wilderness is paradise now,” Stiles finished and looked up at Felipe, his eyes dewy and wet.

And when the kiss came, it was sweet, a gentle pressing of two lips together like a whisper leaving the memory of Felipe’s lips imprinted on Stiles’s mouth. Felipe drew back, looking at Stiles with something akin to wonder and Stiles felt a silent tear roll down his cheek, streaking his lips with the taste of bitter salt.

 

They didn’t talk about the kiss or Stiles’s crying. To know a friend well is to  both understand their words and respect their silences. Later that night, Felipe and Stiles wrapped themselves in individual pockets of perfect silence as they boarded the taxi to the Gallileo Galilei planetarium. The building was made of a sparkled sphere embedded with a hundreds of flickering white lights, surrounded by a wheel of glass that glittered black at night.

In the planetarium, while Stiles and Felipe stood, hands barely touching in awe at the beauty of the starry night, Stiles mused sadly that it wasn’t necessarily the submissiveness or even the shame of being an omega that hurt the most, it was that he had lost the right to make choices. He could not choose where to work, what to study, or even whom to love. Betas and Nulls (those without any designation) could choose their lovers, find someone who met their constellation of requirements and settle down. And there’s something magical about the act of choosing, the knowledge that your destiny was your own to shape. The beauty of free will.

But he was at the mercy of his biology, forced to fall in love with whatever alpha his hormones chose. And in abstract it sounded perfect, right? Who wouldn’t want a soul mate, someone who cared for them unconditionally, a marriage that would never fall apart? But, Stiles thought, those mistakes, those lovers who were not quite right, those breakup pains make us human. And the right to be able to choose someone to build your life around rather than have to place yourself into the hands of fate was a blessing that everyone else took for granted. He spied a group of betas examining a distant star in the corner, and thought _I would give anything to be one of them._

At the end of the day, his lack of choice meant that even though he loved and cherished Felipe, even though Felipe was perfect for him, even though he dreamed of waking up to sunny smiles every morning, he had no future with Felipe. Instead he would be placed with a Derek Hale whom he had never met and didn’t want.

The truth hurts.

And of course there was also the pesky problem that omegas had no rights to property, could not have jobs, were not educated, and had no rights to their children. In Argentina, things were better, omega rights activists had gained some traction and at least omega children were taught to read and write and allowed to go out  in public unchaperoned. But of course, while “alphas went to college to get more knowledge. Omegas went to Home Economics class to learn useless crap like knitting and sewing and proper positions to please alphas in bed. Stiles gagged in disgust at the thought.

“You’re awfully quiet today,” Felipe remarked.

Stiles raised an eyebrow, “Just thinking.”

“Thinking of what, Stiles” Felipe teased.

Stiles decided to be as reckless as he dared,

“Of this” and he kissed Felipe full on the mouth, teeth, tongue, as if he could swallow his erstwhile lover whole.

Felipe began to slowly kiss back and then Stiles was overwhelmed with a flood of pain through the bond, so intense he could barely stand up straight. It felt like someone was setting hot coals to his throat and he abruptly pulled away from the kiss.

“I have to g-go b-bathroom”, Stiles squeaked, running for the lavatory.

Once in the stall, Stiles fell to his knees on the dirty tile floor and began to throw up blood.

Beneath his skin, the bond raged, prickled like a wild thing, he could feel his mate’s distress, anger, and pain, so overwhelmingly he could not remember where he started and Derek ended for a second. It was like they were one and the same. like he was holding Derek’s heavy weight in his arms.

It took 15 minutes, but by the end, his throat was raw and Stiles was queasy from blood loss. Stiles tried to rinse his mouth the best he could with tap water. He found Felipe standing outside his door.

Shuddering even in the 60 degree Farenheit (or 15 degree Celsius) weather, stiles covered his arms.

“We need to go home, Felipe, please” Stiles whispered hoarsely.

Stiles did not speak another word until they both got home. In the guest bed, Stiles wrapped himself in the warm comforters, shuddering and trying to stay warm.

And he cried as quietly as he could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, chapter 3 is up!  
> Hmm, a lot of people have been talking about how Stiles "used" an omega in the last few chapters and I guess to me it didn't really bother me as much. Stiles is pretending to be an alpha, so he can't just have an omega he never uses, it would be unseemly. Not only that, there's definitively some cognitive dissonance there, Stiles has never accepted himself as an omega or that he even has an omega side. Something I might explore in later chapters. Anyway, I wanted to use this fic as a way to kind of just think about A/B/O fics and what it would mean to live in that world.
> 
> Enough rambling from me, I hope you like this chapter!


	4. A Deal with the Devil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a deal with the devil is made and Stiles's good name is destroyed irredeemably.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also: Exeter-in the United States, a private high school which costs around 40,000-50,000 dollars a year. It is a boarding school only the elite of the elite attend and sends most of it's graduates to top colleges.  
> American Math Olympiad- A huge mathematical competition, which takes the best math students in America and eventually has them compete against the best math students from other countries.

**Derek**

Derek was furious. He had spent all week trying to figure out where Stiles might have gone, he figured Stiles would use the nearest airport in New York City, the ANK. But there was no record of a “Stiles Stilinski” on that plane. He then tried the Heathcliff airline, no dice. Damn it. Stiles seemed to have just vanished into thin air, and the taxicab driver who ferried him away was nowhere to be found. Oddly enough, Stiles’s passports and documents were all missing from his flat.

Derek was at a loss.

And even worse, bond sickness was hitting him hard, making him tired, making it difficult to sleep as the wolf ached and longed for his mate.

And then Stiles kissed someone else.

It felt like an explosion in his chest, a tiny bomb, spreading pain to all his outer limbs and organs, bruising his ribs and his heart. Blood trailed from his nose.

His omega was kissing someone else.

The knowledge was agony.

And Derek was angry, so angry that Stiles didn’t seem to give a damn about him. He was angry with the stupid man Stiles had kissed, because who could be _more_ worthy of his mate than him?

But he was also hurting because he loved Stiles, felt an immediate connection to the unflappably calm omega he had met, the bond between them made it impossible for him to think of Stiles with anything but fondness and longing. His wolf wanted his mate.

He was curled in this cloud of self-indulgent misery when his sister, Laura Hale dropped by for an unexpected visit.

 “Still no luck?” Laura asked, astonished.

‘”No” Derek admitted, “I can’t find his name on any plane’s seat, nor do I have any idea where he would go”.

Laura looked at Derek appraisingly, “We need to take drastic measures,”

Derek huffed, they had had this argument before.

“Laura, I don’t trust OCS” , Derek rebuffed.

“But you need all the help you can get”, Laura countered.

“You need to stop telling me how to deal with my mate,” Derek growled, “the situation is under control. Okay?”

“So what have you done to find him?” Laura asked pointedly.

“Well,” Derek began, “I have checked all the airline seats in the area, searched for the taxi driver he used, examined all the stuff in his apartment…..”

“You are  suicidal. Might as well break the bond now,” Laura said angrily.

“What? Why?” Derek asked, confused.

“You’re not even trying, Der. At least put a newspaper article in the New York Times or something!” Laura exploded. “You have three months and you know most alphas don’t even make it that long. It’s been a month already Derek. I don’t think you understand how this works, Derek. If you don’t find your mate in three months, You Will Die.”

“I don’t trust the OCS with my omega,” Derek argued, “you’ve seen the reports Laura, I don’t want my omega in their custody!”

“Then Stiles shouldn’t have run away from his damn duty,” Laura yelled.

Her words hung in a moment of silence.

Then Laura continued, softly, “Look, I know you love your mate, but from my perspective, Stiles is hiding, hurting you, leaving my sweet, good-natured, and caring brother to waste away to death. I want him found and I want you to live. So please, put aside your honor, just for today because you need all the help you can get. Please let me call the OCS. Let me get a story written in the New York Times, let me give you every chance possible to survive”

Derek closed his eyes in resignation, and remembered the agony of the kiss.

“Ok”

* * *

 

It took three days for the New York Times article to come out. The headline: The writer, an alpha by the name of Frederick Richardson wrote, **A Mask of Lies**

“ _Stiles Stilinski’s life began with falsehood. When he was born, the little red card was marked alpha instead of omega. It is this lie that Stiles Stilinski has perpetuated throughout his entire life,”_

Derek frowned, this was not the article he hoped for.

 Richardson continued, “ _Did Stiles Stilinski, an omega, really have the intelligence to graduate from an elite prep school? A fellow classmate at Exeter and former rival said this of Stiles Stilinski, “He was crafty, very street smart._

_He never seemed to study and yet got the top grades in our history and politics classes,” here the classmate who did not wish to be identified, paused, “well, now we know how he got all those great grades and  recommendations from the Alpha professors”._

_Colleagues of Stiles Stilinski seemed shocked by the revelation of Stiles’s true gender. Art Schlonsky, the mathematics teacher at Exeter recalled, “Stiles Stilinski was one of my top students, very few others had his intuitive grasp of logical proofs. I don’t believe he could be an omega, that’s biologically impossible! We all know omegas are, well, mentally lacking”._

Derek felt himself growl at the unfounded accusations.

  _“Stiles’s prep school record was “exemplary”, or that’s what Exeter officials told our reporters, we were never allowed to see or verify these documents. However, maybe the most important thing Stiles learned at Exeter was not reading, writing and ‘rithmetic, but the fine art of lying. He covered his entire life in a fine tissue thin mask of lies, never showing anyone his true self. Sources say Stiles made extra money by running a gambling ring and that Stiles was known as the man to go to whenever a student had a problem and needed something fixed. Unsurprisingly._

Derek kept reading incredulously.

_If the OCS was allowed by our constitutional government to test every child after puberty, then maybe Stiles’s falsehood could have been ended and his energies directed to more suitable omega pursuits. Instead Stiles was “suspiciously absent” on the OCS post-puberty omega testing date and pleaded that he could not make any make ups due to his participations in the United States Mathematics Olympiad. And instead of punishment, Stiles was rewarded for his lies._

Derek didn’t think he could stomach anymore, so he turned to the last paragraph.

_So, I would call for justice. Justice for the hundreds of people Stiles duped over the years. Justice for the alphas who obviously did Stiles’s work for him, but even more, justice for his mated alpha, Derek Hale. Derek Hale is a good man, the only man who might be able to reform such a wayward omega. He deserves to have his mate back, he deserves to live and not to lie in misery on his couch, barely able to breathe, shuddering under the pain of life support machines because the only man who could save his life, Stiles Stilinski, abandoned him to die._

Derek shook his head in disgust, it’s only been a month, he thought, I’m not even in the hospital yet.

After that overwrought paragraph, the author wrote:

_If you have any tips or information, call the number 917-334-3456_

 “This is a disaster”, Derek muttered, he cursed Laura.

 

And so it was.

 

But it worked.

 

Tips poured in over phone and email, along with letters from other alphas and betas expressing condolences for his pain.  Derek had to open a spreadsheet to track all the data he got.

On Friday, a black car with tinted windows drove up and stopped in front of Derek’s house.

“Hello,” the man introduced himself in a cool, unemotional voice, “I’m Agent Smith, an OCS representative sent to help assist you in this case”. The man wore a black suit, with a black tie and a white T-shirt, his blonde hair was shaved in a buzz cut, blue ice eyes surveying the room. He reeked of sour alpha smell.

Derek shook his head, “Look, I don’t really need or want the OCS’s help. I think—“

“Nonsense, nonsense,” chided Agent Smith, “Of course you need our help, you’re failing. Do you even know which airline Stiles used yet?”

Derek tried to interrupt, “not yet, but I’ve got a lot of tips coming in that point to—“

Agent Smith cut Derek off again, “You mean tips based on that stupid grainy photo you placed in the New York Times article?”

Derek felt anger build inside of him, this was an unfamiliar alpha, in his territory, challenging his ability to find his mate. He gritted his teeth together, “Listen here, Agent whatever. I don’t need your help and I never asked for it, so if you would kindly walk out of the house so I can get on with my search for my mate.”

As Derek spoke, the Agent pulled a small, black Lenovo tablet out of a suitcase. He turned the tablet on and after a few quick movements with his fingers, brought up a video.

In spite of himself, Derek couldn’t help but glance at the video.

In the video, a young man in a blue hoodie, carrying a small suitcase bought a ticket to Buenos Aires, Argentina. He paid in cash. Derek stared at the picture, his bond thrumming with the shock of recognition. “That’s Stiles, that’s my mate”

Agent Smith gave a smile, revealing a mouth with way too many sharp teeth, “yes, it is dated 5 weeks ago, showing that Stiles chose to flee to Argentina. All we need to know now is where.”

Derek was stunned into silence for a minute and the Agent seized the opportunity to speak.

“You have a few options Derek Hale. You could break the bond, set Stiles free. But the longer you wait to break the bond, the stronger the bond becomes, holding your neural pathways in a death grip. I would guess that if you broke the bond today, you might get sick, but perhaps, with a lot of therapy, still survive.

But I know your type” and here Agent Smith began to pace, “You don’t want to give up on the opportunity for true love. And even more, there are all kinds of delicious incentives and benefits to bonding alphas; increased brainpower, a partner to share your ruts with, and in some cases, even special abilities. You, Derek Hale, are used to having the best, why would you deny yourself the opportunity to become better than you’ve ever been,” Agent Smith smiled.

“If you really want to find Stiles, then you need me and you need the OCS. Your omega is obviously a very tough cookie. He has friends all over the seven different continents, unending resourcefulness, and the ability to hide in any crook and cranny. Without our help, you’ll never find him, he’ll lead you on a wild goose chase and in three months you’ll be in the same position, only much deader,” Agent Smith chuckled at his own joke.

“We have satellites, we have agents in different countries, cameras and every single hi-tech weapon and gadget that the civilized world has ever known. And several no one has used yet.” Agent Smith finished, “you want us on your side.”

Derek closed his eyes.

He didn’t trust the OCS. There were reports of several omegas dying under their care. But omegas needed a firm hand sometimes. And he knew Agent Smith was right, he would never find Stiles without help.

Derek opened his eyes again, “Ok, what do you want in return?”

Agent Smith grinned again. Derek didn’t like it, there was something deeply unsettling about that smile.

“We want you to make a public appearance with your omega and talk about how much the OCS helped you reform Stiles. And we want a chance to put Stiles through our revised Omega training programme” Agent Smith stated. Upon seeing Derek’s look of alarm, the man backtracked, “I promise, the program is much milder and promises even better results,” Agent Smith demurred.

Derek Hale knew that after the outcry over omega mistreatment, the OCS was trying desperately to get back into the public’s good graces. Helping Derek find Stiles would show the public that the OCS was needed and suppress fledgling Omega rights groups.

Derek knew inside himself that he shouldn’t but he was desperate and the bond had begun to feel more and more unstable.

“I’ll do it”

* * *

 

** Stiles **

Stiles hadn’t tried to kiss Felipe since that night, and the itch in his veins, like a second sense, told him he needed to get going soon. These days he felt like he was standing around, waiting for the axe to drop. He didn’t want to leave Felipe because he couldn’t admit to himself that his life, his love of Felipe was really over.

Felipe was watching him, and Stiles knew it. The “Buenos Dias’s” were a little more acidic, the goodbyes more final.

Stiles came back from an internet café one day to see Felipe in his room, rooting through his backpack.

Stiles stood on the threshold of his bedroom, shocked into stillness. Felipe stared at Stiles’s wide brown eyes and shook his head in frustration.

“I’m not stupid, Stiles. I know your job would never give you one month vacation. But I can’t figure out what you’re hiding and it’s killing me. Stiles, you know I love you, have always loved you since the beginning. You broke my heart once and now, after we kissed, it’s like I don’t even exist, you won’t talk to me or speak to me. You refuse to kiss me or touch me.,” Felipe paused for a breath, “Why Stiles? I would give everything I’ve ever had to you. Why don’t you love me?”

Felipe’s eyes watered and Stiles’s heart thumped painfully in his throat.

Stiles walked over to Felipe and found himself in the powerful grip of his suppressed omega instincts.

He couldn’t help curling into Felipe’s lap.

Running his fingers along the man’s shoulder even though his skin felt like fire because Felipe was “the wrong alpha”.

He placed Felipe’s hand to his chest. His skin crawled with ants. He swallowed.

“Felipe, I do. I do love you,” Stiles admitted.

Felipe felt Stiles’s heart reverberate. Stiles’s heart did not skip a beat. Stiles treasured that moment later after everything had gone horribly wrong. Later, when all he had was hurt and darkness around him. He would always remember the way Felipe’s face relaxed, lit up when Stiles told him the truth, breaking into a smile so wide it hurt Stiles to look at it.

Then abruptly, Felipe seemed to realize something and his smile disappeared, eyes darkened.

“Then what is going on, Stiles? Are you in some kind of trouble? Let me help you.” Felipe asked.

Stiles forced his instincts to quiet and pulled himself out of Felipe’s lap.

“I just have to figure out a few things, Felipe, ok?”

And the smile was gone again.

Stiles knew he _really really_ had to leave soon. He sewed all his cash into the fabric of a new jacket he bought. He shaved his hair, hoping the buzz cut would leave him less recognizable. He set all his plans in motion, but he still couldn’t do it. Couldn’t leave the flat where he had felt so much peace.

Stiles was not surprised when it ended suddenly. He was only shocked there was no screaming, no tears.

Stiles had been doing some work on a computer in the nearby internet café, just simple freelance writing, trying to make himself some extra dough. It was late afternoon when Stiles stretched out his long legs, cracked his knuckles and pondered the hazy rays of late afternoon light. He knew Felipe was usually back by four.

Felipe had kindly gifted Stiles with a key to the flat. Stiles knocked on the door, and when he heard no answer, frowned.

Stiles opened the door to find Felipe sitting on the sofa in a dark living room.

Felipe was unemotional as he looked at Stiles, “I have been living with a lie,” he said slowly.

Stiles’s eyebrows dipped in confusion, “What?”

Felipe handed him a few pieces of newspaper. It was an article from the New York Times. **A Mask of Lies** , the title screamed.

A blurry photo of him was pasted on the front page.

Oh no.

Stiles flipped through the pages of the newspaper in growing horror. He had never slept with his teacher to get good grades. He hadn’t even known, until puberty that he was an omega. He didn’t force his underlings to solve his cases. And Dear God, Joseph Kostos couldn’t reason his way out of a paper bag, forget about solving all the difficult forensic cases he’d worked on. Richardson had slandered his name in the filthy, slick mud of lies.

“You believe this?” Stiles asked Felipe incredulously.

Felipe looked preternaturally calm, “It explains a lot Stiles. Like how you’ve been wearing long sleeve shirts in this warm 18 degrees (Celsius) weather. Because you’re hiding your Korsakoff’s gland that marks you as a mated omega. And of course, you’ve been ill, bonding sickness. And when you kissed me, that made you sick too right? Is all of this just a game to you, Stiles?” Felipe asked quietly.

Stiles felt himself back up against the wall, cowering, an unfortunate side effect of his enhanced omega instincts.

“No”, Stiles whispered quietly.

Felipe looked down at the white carpet, almost muttering to himself, “And I’ve sheltered you, all this time when some alpha is dying because you won’t accept your bond, because you’re just running away and leaving him for dead. You don’t even seem to care that your bond mate is dying. You’re betraying him. I thought you were a better person than that,” Felipe said in a sad way.

Even in the grip of panic, Stiles was creating a mental list of things he’d need to bring as he fled, back routes he’d use to escape if the OCS was outside. Felipe looked at  Stiles with growing anger as Stiles stood in silence.

_Shit_ , Stiles thought, _I need to play for time._

Stiles let tears spill down his cheeks, “Please Felipe, it was just so sudden and he claimed me and I didn’t, I didn’t know what to do?” Stiles sobbed. _It wasn’t exactly a lie, the claiming was sudden, but Stiles had of course planned out what to do if an alpha claimed him, had kept a plan on file in case of emergencies and did a mock run through it once every year. So yeah, Stiles damn well knew what to do._

“I don’t want him to be my alpha. I want you,” Stiles whispered.

That was also not the truth.

With a clarity he had never felt before, Stiles knew that he did not want Felipe as his alpha.

He knew he could run circles around Felipe and manipulate Felipe to his will, but that wasn’t the only reason. Stiles wanted his alpha to understand why he ran away to escape the Omega Codes. He wanted his alpha to see him as human, not a breeding farm. And Stiles knew, from discussion with Felipe, that Felipe disdained omegas. Even know, Felipe was staring at him with something like disgust, as if he was a dog that needed to be returned to his owner.

Nope. Stiles was just damned unlucky in love.

Stiles could read the hate in Felipe’s cold, scrutinizing gaze, which like an X-ray, seemed to lay him bare to the bone.

“I don’t want to hear it Stiles. You need to leave my house. Now” Felipe stated icily.

Stiles’s tried to ignore his feelings of loss, pain, hurt, betrayal ( _Why didn’t Felipe understand?_ ) and said quietly.

“We used to love each other once, right? Can you please give me an hour before you call? I’d rather call Derek personally and announce my return than have him hear it from someone else. It makes my alpha angry and he threatened to send me to the OCS”, after speaking in a whisper and dropping his eyes to the floor, Stiles affected a realistic shiver to arouse Felipe’s protective alpha instincts.

Something shifted in Felipe’s face, a crack appearing in the stone, “Fine. One hour”

Stiles ran to the bedroom, picked up his black jacket and gray hoodie. He left behind his computer, and ran out.

On the street, Stiles looked left and right before hailing a taxi. He took a deep breath when no authorities appeared to arrest him.

He was lucky Felipe secretly, deep down, still loved Stiles. He could read it in the twitch in Felipe’s face as he tried to be unemotional.

He couldn’t believe Felipe had bought his excuse. The man was a dullard, as if Stiles would ever go back to America and love as _anyone’s_ kept omega. What a joke.

Now that Derek had that disgusting article out, he had to be even more careful. Luckily he had already bought a ticket for a bus to Montevido. He pulled his new passport out of his pocket. After a few discreet bribes to the right people _(Did Felipe really think he only visited museums all day? Jesus Christ)_ , he now had a new, perfectly boring name: Santiago Rodriguez.

He would have to lay low, stay away from the authorities, take on odd jobs. The OCS was definitively on the lookout for him, or if they weren’t, would soon be. He needed to get from Uruguay to Paraguay.

Paraguay was one of the only countries in the world to grant full rights to all omega citizens, allow them to hold jobs, take part in democracy and choose their bondings freely.

If he could get to Paraguay, Stiles knew, he would not only be safe, but free. Stiles dared to imagine it. He would rebuild his tattered reputation, gain fluency in Spanish and slowly work his way up the corporate ladder. Except he would be able to live life as an outward omega, he wouldn’t have to hide anymore.

His secondary gender wouldn’t matter.

With that hope, he steeled himself for the days that would come.

It was about to get rough.

* * *

 

**Derek**

It was 7 pm when the call came in.

A man named Felipe Gutierrez Hidalgo was on the other line.

“I’m really sorry, he never told me he was bonded,” Felipe apologized, “But I set him straight and he said he was going to call you.”

“What? Who is this?” Derek answered in confusion.

“It’s Felipe. I’m the one whom Stiles has been living with for the past few weeks. He said he wanted to call you first to tell you about what was going on…”

Derek went wide eyed in astonishment, “He never called me at all. He lied. So you’re telling me he left an hour ago?”

Derek texted Smith, “Agent Smith, I need you to book me a flight to Argentina. Immediately. We’ve got a lead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys,  
> Thanks so much for the comments. ( Rolls on floor with awe) , it feels awesome I have never had so many commentators before!  
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy this installment. I find myself itching to write something about Stiles's backstory, how it must have felt growing up as an omega amongst all Alphas in high school far away from his dad and home.... Anyway, more about Stiles's backstory will show up later......  
> Enjoy.


	5. Bonding Sickness: Phase two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Derek is fast approaching, and Stiles makes some stupid mistakes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The only trigger warning needed for this chapter is:mind control/compulsions  
> Cool facts: Hotel Sofitel Montevido is a real hotel in Uruguay. Uruguay can be reached from Argentina by either bus or ferry. And Montevido is both the capital and the largest city in Uruguay.  
> Also the 28,000 ikepod hourglass exists:http://www.hodinkee.com/blog/2011/3/29/the-ikepod-hourglass-by-marc-newson-quite-possibly-the-coole.html   
> And yes, it is the most pretentious thing ever. Haha.
> 
> Hint for the next chapter: Drug smuggling routes in South America. That is all, haha,

**Stiles**

Stiles looked at the skyscrapers that dotted the sky, listening to the blares and beeps of traffic from his hotel in Montevido. Well, 5 star hotel, because Stiles enjoyed the little things. Hotel Sofitel Montevido was a wonder and a beauty. Outside, the casual observer was overwhelmed by the slightly gothic architecture, the smooth white walls, and the innumerable painted glass windows. 

Sitting in this bed, with its Egyptian cotton high thread count sheets, and looking at the artistically slanted roof, Stiles could almost imagine that the last month had been a nightmare; that he was still an alpha, back in the lap of luxury where he belonged. He could tell himself that he was in Uruguay for a business trip to bring some new clients into the firm. If he closed his eyes and tried, he could almost ignore the noxious scent of _omega_ that wafted from his skin, overpowering the gallons of alpha spray he had to douse himself with. He could pretend he had not taken the Buquebus Ferry from Buenos Aires to Colonia, under an assumed name, all his worldly possessions filling one small backpack.

He was a man who used to have so many suits in his walk in closet that he could wear a different suit every week of the year and never run out of clothes.

Now?

He only had one.

Earlier in the evening, Stiles had dressed in his last fine suit, (which he had convinced Felipe to buy him during one of their few shopping trips) and doused himself in Alpha scent. He knew what he planned to do was risky, but he wanted one night, just one, to pretend he was something more than a fugitive and a runaway. When he handed the black express card to the nice Alpha woman being the counter, he felt his palms sweat. She gave him a once over, as if mentally checking to see if anything was wrong. Stiles forced himself to stand tall, eyes staring at her, unafraid, mouth quirked in a little cocky smile. He tried to ignore the new voice. The voice he hated. The one that had started emerging after years of suppression. The tiny whisper in his head that said, “ _It’s an alpha, you should show your neck, look down in submission”_. That voice could never be allowed to exist.

The woman finished checking him over and nodded, apparently satisfied by what she had seen.

“We can offer you room 17”, she said in softly accented English. Stiles nodded and took the keycard she offered him.

She continued, “We have a bar, a casino, and tons of restaurants and dining options housed in this building. If you like I can recommend a list of—“

“No thanks,” Stiles cut her off, “I would just like a non-smoking room  and to rest uninterrupted,” knowing he sounded sharp, Stiles modified his tone, “it’s been a long night”

“Of course,” the woman replied, affixing a painted smile to her face that was just as much a part of her mask as Stiles’s alpha musk, “I’ll see you in the morning,”

Once in the comfort of his room Stiles felt hot tears start in his throat. He made an effort to master himself, and control his emotions. Usually Stiles was calm and cool. Even during the worst crises at Boroff & Sons, Stiles did not panic. Once, a particularly savvy computer hacker had crashed the Boroff & Sons computer system, stealing the data of thousands of influential, wealthy clients and the passwords to their investment accounts. Everyone at the company, even the vice president had panicked, trying to hire other experts to unsuccessfully repair the breach. While all the other executives had run around like chickens with their heads cut off, Stiles pulled from his deep, internal, well of calm and made a few chance calculations in his head with the knowledge he had available.

And then Stiles had smiled.

Stiles remembered how the vice president had looked at him as if he was some kind of crazed lunatic.

“Do you not understand what is going on here, junior executive? We could lose the company, have to file for bankruptcy, and some of the clients we have lost might never come back! Why are you smiling?”

Stiles closed his eyes and then gave the vice president a meaningful look, “I am sorry Mr. Prescott”.

After the meeting, Stiles had requested a one on one meeting with the vice president, laid out his theories of who the computer hacker was, formulated a plan of attack and named his price.

Two weeks after all the Wall Street Journal wrote an article foretelling the firm’s untimely demise, Boroff & Sons was bigger and stronger than ever and Stiles, well, Stiles was a senior executive, with his own office and a $28,000 dollar hourglass.

And then it had all come crashing down.

_It wasn’t fair._

Stiles had worked hard all his life.

 As a scatterbrained kid growing up in a lower middle class family, he had clawed himself to the top. It had not been easy to find a way to fit in at the prep school academy he went to. While he was on a scholarship and barely had enough money to afford lunch some days, his fellow friends could eat at some of the most expensive restaurants in the town, wear clothes by brand name designers he had never heard of and vacation on family yachts.

Every summer, he would head home to his father, to the house that felt just a little emptier without his mom. Most summers, instead of going to expensive summer programs, he would go home to help his dad out. He’d clean the house because God knows his father didn’t know how. He would make his dad low fat meals and work to save money so that he had enough in the bank to feed himself for the upcoming year. When he left each summer, his father would always ask him if he needed money, and Stiles would always say “Don’t worry dad, I got it”. His father would look at him with a pinched look in his eyes, and Stiles could almost hear him worry about how he couldn’t afford to take care of his son. But John Stilinski said nothing and Stiles would let the silence hang there. His father was not glib and energetic like his son, he was a man of few words, who loved his only son, Stiles, deeply. Stiles knew his father loved him, even if his father never said anything. He knew it by the way his dad would smile when he stepped off the airplane when he came home to see him. He knew it in the way when, after his mom died, his father took him fishing and curved an arm around Stiles’s shoulder as Stiles sobbed out his loss. He knew it in the way his dad would always complain about whatever tofu concoction he made for dinner but John Stilinski would still eat his son’s cooking without complaint. Even if it was terrible.

His father was a lowly paid sheriff of a small town who had seen too much suffering in his forty-seven years. Stiles would always treasure the moment when he graduated from college, Yale diploma in hand, and saw his father smile with incandescent joy.

To Stiles that was what love was, as simple as the ground beneath him, as irresistible as gravity.

Not this mockery of a bond, this hopeless infatuation, he could feel thrumming cruelly inside of him.

Stiles turned his face into the pillows and felt himself cry.

He knew that the bond he shared with Derek was enhancing his omega traits; making him moody, hormonal, dredging up the omega instincts he’d struggled to hide in Exeter so long ago.

He shuddered.

Bond sickness was a three phase disease. First there was an early phase that lasted for one month, during that phase, often called the lag phase, the bonded pair showed no symptoms. Then the acute phase hit, during the acute phase, the telepathic bond between mates strengthened, a hormone surge in both the alpha and omega enhanced omega and alpha traits, and both members began to feel ill. And then there was a terminal phase. During the terminal phase, the pain both members felt began to fade for a few days, only to resurge with an increased intensity. Most Alphas did not survive the terminal phase. There had been records of omegas surviving the terminal phase, but no one knew what the side effects of a dead bond would be. As for what occurred in the terminal phase: excruciating pain or mental insanity or fever or worse, well most medical doctors had no clue. Very few mates ever had to endure bond sickness, so there was no need for doctors to learn about the biological underpinnings of what was considered an extinct disease. Since omegas were never given a choice and few alphas rejected their mates, no one suffered from bond sickness anymore.

Stiles guessed, due to his symptoms, that he had passed to Stage 2 bond sickness. Mentally, he knew his weepiness and mood swings were not his fault, but he couldn’t seem to control himself anymore. He wanted—“ _warm arms encircled around him, lips pressed to his forehead, a sweet, spicy scent lulling him into slumber. Alpha.”_

He wanted his alpha.

What? No. scratch that.

He wanted the only man who had ever made him feel safe. He wanted his dad.

But he knew that calling his father from the hotel phone would be a bad idea. The OCS might find his father and imprison him for concealing his son’s dynamic.

No. Stiles curled up into fetal position and wrapped his arms around himself, as he tried to lull himself to sleep.

His dad would be so worried about him.

* * *

 

**Derek**

Derek felt like he was playing a game of cat and mouse with Stiles. Except he was the clumsy, slow, gray Tom. And Stiles was the quick witted and even more fleet-footed Jerry.

He had caught the first flight to Buenos Aires as soon as Felipe called him. It had been a 10 hour nonstop flight during which Derek had gotten very little rest or sleep, hoping against hope that Stiles would still be in Argentina by the time he landed. Agent Smith had met him at the airport in Buenos Aires, able to somehow mysteriously make it to Argentina faster than he had. Derek suspected OCS had a good stable of private jets.

Once he landed, he barely had time to look at the beautiful sights of Buenos Aires before Agent Smith dragged him into a black limo. “Felipe Hidalgo has been taken into custody for the crime of aiding and abetting a runaway mated omega. Follow me.”

Derek shuddered, wondering what “taken into custody” meant.

The ride to the OCS headquarters was short. The OCS had an embassy in almost every country allied to the USA. Only the 12 Enemy states had rejected OCS interference. Derek tried to ignore the slow feeling of trepidation as he entered the stone building. The stone building was built in the brutalist style, heavy squat blocks, few windows, crude accents. It was not a building that spoke of kindness or mercy.

Derek followed Agent Smith through a black and white antechamber, and entered a stainless steel elevator that carried him down to level B2. There were multiple basement levels in the embassy. Derek idly wondered what was down there, but to be honest, he didn’t want to know. Sometimes knowledge was _not_ power.

He was placed in a dark, gray room with a cheap wooden table, one bare exposed lightbulb and two rickety chairs. As soon as he found a way to balance in one of the chairs, a dark haired man with dark brown eyes, and a slim stature entered. The man smelled unmistakably of _alpha_ and the fading scent of something irresistibly sweet _that smelled so much like home and why was this sweet scent on the wrong alpha?_ Derek found himself growling at the man in anger, bending over the table, ready to tear Felipe from limb to limb for touching his omega.

The door opened again.

Agent Smith placed a hand on Derek’s shoulder, “Stop it Derek. Stop”

That touch of the unfamiliar, terrible smelling alpha was enough to make Derek recoil, which gave him a chance to come to his senses.

Felipe looked at him appraisingly, or as appraisingly as one could look with one bruised eye swollen shut, “You’re really deep within the second stage of bonding sickness, aren’t you?”

As soon as Felipe spoke, Derek felt that the spell had been broken. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t hate this man who spoke with such compassion and levity. He sighed, looked at Felipe’s nasty swollen eye.

“Excuse me for a second” Derek stated. He then gave Smith a meaningful look and walked out the door.

“What did you do to him?” Derek asked in an angry whispered voice. Was it your men who put those bruises on him?”

Agent Smith answered calmly, “You wanted to find Stiles. We needed to know he wasn’t holding anything back,”

Derek felt anger rising inside of him, “Did you ever think we could have, I don’t know, asked him if he knew where Stiles had gone?”

Agent Smith continued impassively, “Torture is more effective than mere questions.”

Derek shook his head in frustration, “I refuse to speak to him here. I want this man returned to his home and we can talk there.”

Agent Smith gave Derek a look that spoke of years of slow boiling hatred. As quickly as the look flashes, it disappears, making Derek feel as if he had only imagined it.

“Derek,” the agent began, as if he was speaking to a small and particularly stupid child, “Argentina has laws on the books against knowingly helping an omega seek freedom. I’m afraid I cannot let him go,”

“If you don’t leave this man alone, our deal is over and then I’ll write a particularly well-worded article for the New York Times about how alphas are treated in OCS custody. And with the Hale name and my _newfound_ celebrity, I think it will make quite an impact on the local populace” Derek suggested to the Agent.

Derek saw the man’s face pale slightly as Derek spoke.

“I do not appreciate being bullied Derek” the Agent stated in a warning tone.

Derek simply smiled and secreted more alpha pheromones into the air.

“I’m sure, our friend—Felipe, isn’t it? –doesn’t appreciate being beaten. But in life, sometimes we all have to do things we don’t want to,” Derek responded in the most patronizingly.

 

And that was how, a few hours later, Derek and Felipe were sitting on Felipe’s sunny veranda in the fashionable neighborhood of Las Carnitas.

Felipe had placed an ice pack over his swollen eye, and was sitting at the table drinking a cup of coffee as he squinted over the horizon.

Felipe stared into the distance, lost in thought and then shook his head.

“Thanks for getting me out of there, Mr. Hale” Felipe greeted as he turned his good eye onto Derek’s face.

“No problem,” Derek responded, “do you have any idea where Stiles might have gone?”

“No” Felipe shook his head, “he is still a mystery to me after all these years”. Felipe sighed.

“No words about places he’d like to visit? No mention of getting passports, nothing?” Derek pressed.

“He played me for a fool,” Felipe replied, “I mean, I didn’t even know he was omega”

Derek felt his shoulders slump. Another dead end again.

Felipe, unaware of Derek’s frustration, continued undaunted.

“He was the first guy I ever loved, you know? I was just a young associate and there was Stiles, fresh out of college, a little wet behind the ears and unsure, but so full of life. Stiles wanted to know everything, his favorite genre was “How to books”. “How to win friends and influence everyone”, “How to fix a motorcycle”, “How to tie a Windsor knot”……” Felipe trailed off.

Derek had been jolted out of his misery by Felipe’s voice. He realized that for all his talk of bonding, he knew very little about Stiles.  He didn’t know Stiles’s favorite book, or what he liked to eat for breakfast. He had never had a chance to sit down with Stiles or even have a simple conversation with his mate. So when Felipe started talking about tidbits of Stiles’s life; Derek jumped at the opportunity to learn more about the man who was supposed to be his soul mate.

“Continue with what you were saying,” Derek said softly.

“I never got a chance to really talk with Stiles. He was too busy running away to give me a chance”, Derek explained.

 So they talked. They talked until the brilliant molten sun had simmered to blood orange, till a silver scimitar moon had risen over an inky dark night.

 Felipe told Derek about how he had met Stiles.

“I met him in a meeting and saw him correctly analyze all of my company’s weaknesses and expose our internal problems to a rival firm,” Felipe chuckled, “He was trying to convince my company to merge with Baroff & Sons so they could increase their market share”

“Was he successful?” Derek asked, intrigued.

“No”, Felipe snorted, “He was still very young and he had forgotten a couple key advantages the company I work for enjoys in Argentina. But, after his performance, I was intrigued and, to be honest, smitten. I took him out to dinner that night.”

“And then sex?”  Derek prompted.

“Would you hate me if I said yes?” Felipe questioned.

Derek felt a spurt of disgust roil in his stomach. Though omegas did not develop full omega characteristics until they met their intended alpha, omegas were expected to remain chaste until claiming. Only low class omegas and sex workers were not virgins until bonding. He felt as if he had lost something precious because Stiles had not stayed pure for him. He wondered how many alphas had been inside of his omega before him. Was he not worth waiting for?

Felipe stilled. “I’m sorry. If it’s any consolation, he lied to all of us”

“Just go on,” Derek said brusquely, trying to get himself under control.

So Felipe talked about Stiles’s likes: curly fries, books, information, puzzles, and his father.

And his dislikes: stupid people, romance novels and movies, laziness, bad coffee

 He talked about how Stiles called his father once every week, but Felipe had never met the man. He talked about Stiles’s 80 hour work weeks, his desire to have sex after he had come off the high of solving a difficult case, Stiles’s love of museums, art galleries and motorcycles. He talked about the way Stiles would smile, one side of his lip curling up when he made a joke, the constellation of moles of covering Stiles’s back, how easily he burned in the sun.

As Felipe spoke, Derek held onto every word, filling in the cracks in his picture of Stiles.

And for the first time ever, Derek felt a stutter in his chest. It took him a second to realize what that feeling was.

Alphas did not grow up feeling very insecure. As a child he had been groomed to believe that as an alpha from one of the richest, most respectable families in the United States he was on the top of the world. He carried himself with an arrogance that was almost palpable to the cursory observer. If you had ever asked him about whether his omega would like him before this fiasco, he would have scoffed.

_“My omega will be grateful to be with me. He or she will worship the ground I stand upon,”_ Derek would have stated.

But obviously that was not true. Stiles didn’t even want him.

What had Stiles seen in Felipe, Derek wondered, that he did not see in me?

He knew Felipe was not smarter than him. He certainly wasn’t richer or more powerful than him. Every omega wants a powerful alpha, so Stiles should have run into _his_ arms. By normal standards, any omega would be thrilled to be his mate.

Listening to Felipe talk about Stiles with such fondness made his heart ache, he wondered why his mate had never given him a chance. Maybe it was the way Felipe carried himself, light and sweet, quick smiles, always ready to forgive. Or maybe it was because Felipe had never known suffering. When someone has suffered, it changes them. Their voice lowers, their steps become heavier, walking more softly on the ground. It is as if their entire being is always aware of the fragility of life.

Derek had lost his entire family at a young age and had been raised by Laura and Peter. He couldn’t say that didn’t change him. He was colder, brasher and less likely to smile. He still had ropy scars from the fire that ran down the length of his back. At times, he woke up, screaming of nightmares.

Maybe Stiles preferred a man who seemed to skate through all of life’s sorrows, untouched by pain, or nightmares.

Maybe he wasn’t good enough.

 

That night, Felipe offered Derek Stiles’s old room. Derek smelled Stiles’s slowly developing sweetness throughout the room mixed with the sharp scent of tears and something inside of him, not the part that was an alpha crying for his omega, but a simpler part of him that was human and wanted to comfort his mate, made him reach out thought the bond.

_Stiles,_ Derek broadcasted

_I know you don’t know me and I don’t know you._

_But if you give me a chance Stiles, I want to know you._

_If you come to me, I will never let you suffer for anything. There’s a beautiful, 17 th century style library at my mansion, with books my ancestors have been collecting since the 1700s. I would give it all to you. I’d buy as many books as you ever desired, Stiles, construct a new wing of the manor just for you._

_I will always cherish you, Stiles_

_I promise you, I can make you happy. Just please, please come home to me._

Derek swallowed, an uncomfortable burning in his throat when no one answered.

Then:

_Derek?_

The voice was a whisper. But it was unmistakably Stiles.

_I don’t want you._

_I will never willingly come back to you.  I don’t want to be yours. The only thing you could do to make me happy would be to break the bond. Just break the bond. We could both still survive this, if you broke our bond tomorrow._

_Don’t force me into this, Derek._

Derek felt his being flooded by anger, his alpha side sharpening its claws in challenge. His mate was still resisting him.

_That will not be possible, Stiles. What is all this foolishness about breaking bonds? It simply is not done. Stiles. This nonsense has to stop._

_Tell me where you are._ Derek demanded, layering his voice with Alpha Command.

He could feel Stiles struggling to resist.

Omegas could generally throw off Alpha commands from Alphas they were not mated to. But now, in the midst of the second stage of binding sickness, Derek knew Stiles would be struggling with his Omega instincts.  And he was Stiles’s mate.

_Tell me, Omega._  He let out the full force of his power into Stiles, it felt like a white fire, irrevocable and implacable. Stiles struggled, but he could only do so much against his biology.

For the first time ever, Stiles failed.

_I’m –iiin the Hotel Sof—Sofitel in Montevido._

Derek felt the alpha inside him smile at Stiles’s obeisance.

_Stay there, Stiles, don’t move, don’t speak to anyone. I’m coming to get you._

After Derek finished layering the command, Stiles blocked out the connection.

He couldn’t say he was surprised.

Derek found the hotel Stiles had mentioned. Then he texted the coordinates of the Hotel to Agent Smith and asked the Agent to make sure Stiles had not given him a false lead.

After that he rubbed his eyes, he had endured an 11 hour flight, a stressful day, and a fight with his mate on no sleep. He was exhausted.

Maybe he could take the smallest of naps……… 

* * *

 

** Stiles **

Stiles was making stupid decisions.  He knew the bonding sickness was impairing his judgment, but good God, responding to Derek through the bond?

That was a fatal error.

By not responding, he had been hoping Derek would think the bond was one-sided or defective. But now?

By showing Derek that Stiles was there, he had given Derek another avenue to harass him. He could only imagine what it would be like, Derek in his head whenever he let the bond open slightly; asking, begging, and threatening. Stiles would have slapped himself if he could move.

But well, he couldn’t.

Generally Stiles could throw off an alpha command. He had to learn the hard way during his prep school days.

But Stiles was weak, tired, moody, and obviously _making shit decisions._ He could feel Mildred screaming at him, battering against the inside of his brain.

Mildred was the name he’d given to his annoying, hated omega instincts that said, “Stay where the alpha wants you. Be a good omega. Sit. Fetch. Roll Over.”

He hated Mildred. He hated himself.

Derek was going to find him, and once the bonding was sealed, he was going to lose all his rights, all his freedom. He might never be able to see the sun again, stuck in the darkness with a moody temperamental Alpha.

Stiles pulsed in anger again, “Did Derek really think Stiles was fleeing because he didn’t know if his alpha owned a large enough library? Did he actually believe he could bribe Stiles to stay with the promise of a bigger room or a wing in a mansion?” He didn’t care about the money, he knew how rich the Hales were, thank you very much. All he wanted was his freedom. The freedom to run through the streets by himself, to have his own money and place of employment, to keep doing the job he loved. And the only way Derek could give him that freedom he so desperately craved was to break the bond. If Derek wouldn’t break the bond….and _soon_ , Stiles felt that no matter how nice Derek was, no matter how sweetly Derek kissed him, the alpha was still his jailer.

And Stiles, desperately wanted to be free.

It was that desire for freedom that saw Stiles sink deeply into meditation, trying to calm himself down and gather the willpower to resist the Alpha’s commands. After an hour, Stiles could move his finger. After two hours, Stiles could leave the bed. After three, Stiles could move to the bathroom and after four, hours of intense concentration, Stiles could finally leave the room.

By the time he was done, blood had crusted all over his face, spilling from his nose and his ears.

His head thrummed with pain and he felt faint. Stiles washed the blood from his face, and slipped out of the hotel without paying.

Since Derek wanted to be Stiles’s alpha so badly.

He could take care of the bill.

 Fuck it. Fuck him.

* * *

 

**Derek**

Derek woke up at 6 am in a panic. The sun had cast a gentle glow on his window. How could he have been so slept so long?

Stiles could be halfway to South Africa by now.

He tried to calm himself down. Hopefully his alpha command had worked, right? That was, if Stiles had given him the right address.

A brief series of raps sounded at his door. He opened the door to see Agent Smith, dressed immaculately in a three piece suit.

Derek rubbed at his sleep gummed eyes, “Did it check out?” he asked testily.

Agent Smith ignored his tone of voice, “Yes. Perfectly. We even found footage of him walking into the hotel and paying with the company card. We’ve frozen the card and we need to be on our way soon. Compulsions get weaker as time passes”

Derek threw together some jeans and shoes. As he ran into the kitchen, he noticed Felipe looking at Agent Smith with outright hatred. Then those warm brown eyes shifted to Derek.

“Good luck, Derek. I hope you find Stiles. You’re a nice guy,” Felipe said with honest sincerity in his voice. His heart did not skip.

Derek wished he could sort out his feelings of jealousy and fondness for Felipe. He tried to smile, forcing his face to get used to the unusual movement.

“You too”

And they were off to Montevido. The biggest city In Uruguay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys!  
> I've been reading your comments. I've been seeing a lot of really interesting comments that I love and reading debates that make me even questions where things are going and push me to write better. Thank you all!  
> Unfortunately.....  
>  There are two things I have to address:  
> 1) While I understand that people have triggers and I'm trying to make a huge effort to accommodate the triggers people have by adding warnings in each chapter , i can't change what naturally flows in the story because people don't like rape. I'm writing in a universe where consent isn't even really possible and omegas are second class citizens, it's not a pc world and I have to be true to that.
> 
> 2) Please do not ask me if I can "hint" at the ending or whether "Stiles ends up submissive" etc.   
> The answer to those questions is: I don't know. In my other story, I wrote the ending before I even started the fic, so I know how it all ends. In this story, I have a general idea of how I want Stiles to end up, but that keeps changing all the time. I.e, This chapter was supposed to cover more ground than it did, but that's not how it ended up.
> 
> I understand that people don't want me to write a story where Derek finally catches Stiles and "by the power of magic healing cock" see "sexual healing" by Marvin Gaye; both of them come together and Stiles is perfectly submissive and they have 15 babies and a white picket fence etc.
> 
> But people need to understand that I also don't want to write that story. Like I really don't want to write that story.
> 
> Just trust me guys. Ok?  
> /End rant/


	6. My Milkshake brings.........

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Stiles gets lucky. 
> 
> Note: the sex here is kind of a cross between consensual and nonconsensual.  
> It's pretty difficult to parse out whether either party is fully consenting or not.  
> I am adding a bold star around the sex part if you want to skip it.

** Stiles **

Stiles stumbled into the discount store, his head spinning from blood loss, shivering. The pain in his head had gone away, replaced by an aching emptiness as his body listed to the side like a drunk or a blind man. As he stumbled along down one alleyway, a man clothed in a ratty gray jacket and dirty pants with unkempt black hair stared at him suspiciously. Stiles met the man’s eyes for a moment and then looked away. He walked into the convenience store. The tiny store had a cracked black and white tiled floor, yellow walls and a man who stood behind a plexiglass window. It was a small tacky store, air smelling vaguely of cigarette smoke, despite the fact that smoking in public places had been illegal in Uruguay since 2006.

This neighborhood wasn’t inhabited by people who gave too many shits about laws.

And Stiles, well, he was the biggest lawbreaker of them all.

Stiles approached the man behind the plexiglass window. In slightly accented Spanish he asked for a bar of chocolate and some soap wrapped in a plastic bag. Stiles didn’t speak much Spanish, but he had been practicing this phrase over and over on the ferry to Uruguay, testing different accents until he could make the words sound natural. The man behind the window gave Stiles a long look and then walked into a back room. Handing Stiles a brown paper bag, the seller affixed a smile onto his face. Stiles "accidentally" let a wad of cash fall from his pocket onto the store floor.

Outside the dirty man leered at Stiles, “I know what you’ve got in that bag gringo. You don’t need that. Why don’t you let me introduce you to the wonders of Alpha cock. Best of all, it’s free.” The man offered.

Stiles did his best to ignore the man and get out of the neighborhood as quickly as possible. He hoped passerbys would ignore the crazy drunkard. Or else he might be in serious trouble.

It was 5 am in the morning, Stiles guessed the time by the way the lavender sky lightened up slightly at the edges, and the illumination of a piercing crescent moon.

Stiles needed to get out of Montevido as fast as he possibly could, before the hotel noticed he was gone, before he was captured by Derek. He needed a plan. He needed a car.

But what rental place would be open at this time?

 _I could always steal one,_ Stiles mused. But Stiles knew his life was not a bad action movie. Also, wiki-how wasn’t the most accurate source on hot wiring cars.

Stiles felt the world spin further around him.

 _I need food_. _I need sleep or else I won’t be able to go on. Where will I go?_

And like the answer to a prayer, a bright yellow M materialized in front of him. McDonalds. Stiles couldn’t help laughing despite his sorry state. Thank God for Americanization.

A few short minutes later, Stiles was munching on an Angus Bacon Hamburger, what Uruguayans called “sandwiches de carne”.

Stiles just called it delicious. Biting into the warm delicious meat had Stiles remembering his prep school days.

Once in Exeter, to celebrate a debate team win, he had suggested that the team go out to eat at McDonalds. His fellow classmates looked at him as if he had suggested that the Catholic Pope ought to be killed and ceremonially  sacrificed to atheists.  An awkward silence ensued, broken only by Philip, a young boy who was  the heir to a vast shipping fortune. In a nasal tone, Phillip explained that “his body was a temple and he would never soil a temple with such filth”.

Others complained that McDonalds was bad for the environment, and so many voices spoke out in such disdain that Stiles felt himself blush in embarrassment. Mercifully, the debate coach broke the argument and suggested that “Chipotle was a better option for everyone”. 

And so it went. It wasn’t until later that Stiles realized that the question of fast food  was a question of class. His friends could afford food like hummus and quinoa and tofuturkey (tofurkey?). Eating McDonalds was only for the lower class, the degenerates. Because of that, Stiles had stopped eating any fast food in front of his friends, preferring to hide his McDonald wrappers in his closet, as if they were contraband drugs. But now, sitting in the brightly lit restaurant, chowing down on his bacon burger, Stiles remembered bright moments in his childhood, like getting a burger for dinner after his dad was finished with work.

On a full stomach, he felt almost happy. And he could feel his brain kick start like a fully charged computer.

Yes, he acknowledged to himself, things were bad, but he was still free.

And he was going to damn well stay that way.

McDonalds was the perfect place to wait until a car rental opened. The store had wi-fi, so Stiles looked up the nearest car rental place on his phone. Even more, McDonalds was not a home diner or restaurant where waiters bugged you about the check, there were no nosey customers. In McDonalds, people ignored him, preferring to take their food to go, or sit quietly with their own meals in the cheap plastic seats. In a way, Stiles couldn’t have found a better place to hide.

At 6, Stiles slung his backpack over one arm and jogged the ten or twenty blocks to the car rental place. Stiles smiled blandly at the dealer, as he tried to think of a non-descript, but reliable car brand. He couldn’t buy a shiny new car or a car in a loud color, because he  didn't want to stand out. That was a no to the red Ferrari sadly. (Not that he wouldn’t like one someday). In the corner of the lot, Stiles saw the perfect car.  A brown mazda with a few dents and scratches. The car looked like it had seen better days.

“Quiero eso” Stiles said, pointing at the brown mazda. The man stared at him in consternation, clearly wondering why an American would ask for such a shitty car. He tried to convince Stiles to get some other car in smooth clear Spanish.

Stiles refused and the man, grudgingly accepted. Stiles handed over his black company card to pay for the car.

Yes, Stiles knew that Derek could track him through his transactions, but to be honest, he didn’t think anyone in the Boroff & Sons knew he still had his company issued card. He figured that since he never got any severance pay or a damn retirement package, he deserved it.  Though to be honest, Stiles admitted to himself, he never formally sent in his resignation letter.

The man was taking longer than expected to process his card.

“What’s the matter?” Stiles asked in slow, but passable Spanish.

“Someone placed a hold on this card” the man said in surprise.

Oh shit, Stiles thought, Derek goddamn it.

Stiles didn’t allow any of his anxiety to reach his eyes.

“Oh, sorry, I forgot that card is expired” Stiles chuckled. Then Stiles reached into his secret jacket pocket and placed a huge wad of cash onto the counter.

“b-but,” the man stuttered, “you need to have a credit card to rent a vehicle”.

On the outside, Stiles was a cool, collected tourist, wearing jeans and a warm hoodie. But if one could see Stiles’s palms or press a thumb to his pulse point, one would feel the rapid thrum of his heart, and the sweatiness of his palms.

From his research, Stiles knew that Uruguay was not a corrupt country in any sense of the word. Transparency International created a list of the most corrupt countries ranked from 1 to 175.  A rank of one belonged to a country so honest, its residents might apply for sainthood in the near future, while 175 meant the country was run by the mafia.

Uruguay’s score?

21

Or basically, disgustingly honest.

Which was why Stiles knew just offering a bribe to the man was not going to work.

So he had to do something he hated to do.

Stiles smiled wider and increased his natural pheromones. Generally both Alphas and Omegas could increase the potency of their scent. The mechanisms by which it worked was not well understood. _Because science only studies Alphas_ , Stiles thought, _they’re missing half the equation._ Stiles knew one sure thing that did increase his scent potency:

Arousal.

Stiles was not like other omegas. He had never sat down waiting in virginal purity for an alpha mate. Mostly because he didn’t want a damn alpha. He had fucked lots of different men and women in his life. So as Stiles stared at the man, he imagined a sweet woman he had fucked once. Was it Tina? She had big tits, bold blue eyes and a killer smile. He had laid her out on the bed and dug his fingers into her sweet, soft folds and…..

The eyes of the man in front of him were glazed in arousal.

Stiles added a bit of a flirtatious tone to his voice, “You look like you need a hand” Stiles stated, deepening his voice to a thrumming bass.

Stiles gave the man money and the man put the cash on the table without even looking at it.

“What do you say you help me and I help you ?"

Most men had never felt the full effect of male omega pheromones. Omegas were generally put on weak pheromone blockers until they were fully mated and claimed. Even more, omegas were kept completely in the dark about their own sex and sexuality, so few omegas had honed their control to the degree that Stiles had.

Stiles generally hated to use “omega wiles”. And as someone who had always passed for an alpha, he hated anything omega with a passion, but well, times were tough.

The man allowed Stiles to rent the car, off the books. Then he followed Stiles as if in a dream, the poor guy never knew what hit him. Stiles let his fingers linger a little too long as he took the key from the man’s hand.

As Stiles situated himself in the car, Stiles heard the man go in to ask his boss for an early lunch break. Stiles watched the man’s retreating behind and was tempted to just speed away.

But he knew he couldn’t. If he drove away like that, the man would raise the alarm about a stolen car. Police would catch him as soon as he turned round the block, and Derek would collect him from the county jail. On the other hand, if Stiles gave this man a favour......the man would be hesitant to call the police because having sex with a client would probably cost him his job.

So Stiles waited.

The man got into the passenger’s seat of the car.

I know a place, the man said, smiling.

**(sex scene below)**

* * *

 In a side street of Montevido, a couple of yards away from a  kid’s playground, Stiles was palming  some strange guy’s dick. Namely, the dick of the car seller. He learned the man’s name was Gustav and he knew little else. Stiles hoped the guy didn’t have any diseases. Hoped.

 Stiles rubbed the man’s penis, up and down, trying to keep a sexy smile on his face as the guy rutted into his hands,  andhe had never felt more used.

He felt like a condom, just a receptacle to masturbate into and throw away.

And even worse, the smell of the guy who was _notmate notmate notmate_ made Stiles feel like he was going to throw up the Angus burger he’d had for breakfast.

Stiles closed his eyes and prayed to any God out there, _please come quickly, please, please._

The man opened his eyes and stared at Stiles’s face “your lips,” the man muttered, “ so beautiful. So good wrapped around my dick”.

Stiles tried not to gag. The guy couldn't even talk dirty properly.

“Suck on me please,” the man begged.

Stiles tried to figure a way out of this dilemma.

“Do you really want me to suck you?” Stiles asked, “wrap my lips around your dick, press sucking kisses to the tip?  or do you want to try something better?”

The man’s brown eyes lit with curiosity.  _Hmm_ , thought Stiles, _he’s still too awake, too perceptive— I need to drug him a little more_. Stiles increased his pheromones in the man’s direction and watched the man’s eyes split wide open in arousal, pupils thinning to pinpricks.

The man panted heavily, “You smell so good. Wha—Wha could be better?”

Stiles nipped the man’s neck lightly, hoping the action he was about to undertake wouldn’t make him too sick.

Hoarsely, Stiles whispered in the man’s ear, “If I fucked you”.

Stiles felt the man shudder underneath him in arousal and terror.

Stiles knew he had to talk the man into it. But he wasn’t too worried, he had talked dozens of alphas into sex like this, fucking their sweet, pliant, virgin holes. All of those alphas had sworn they would never ever have anal sex.

Never say never.

Anyway, Stiles had never heard any complaints.

Stiles didn’t really bottom for anyone— except Theodore. But Stiles never allowed himself to think about Theodore anymore.

Stiles continued his running monologue, “You know how big my cock is? 8 inches, inside of you, filling you up, so good, better than anything else. I’d never let anyone know about it.Our dirty secret. But once I get inside of you, you’ll never want me to leave” Stiles chuckled, “I can give you the best fuck you ever had.  

 Dare to try?” Stiles asked, biting the man’s ear.

The car seller— _Gustav,_ Stiles tried to remind himself, licked his lips.

“Okay.”

Stiles felt a predatory thrill inside of him, the thrill of the chase, catching unsuspecting prey. For once his stupid omega voice  quieted in his head, for once, he could ignore the sickness every touch of this man evoked in him.

Stiles was gonna get lucky today.

Oh yeahhhhh.

He knew that the sex was going to be harsh, almost like he could taste submissiveness in the air. Alphas thought their presentation determined whether they were dominant or submissive.

Idiots.

Reaching into his backpack, Stiles found his condom wallet. Every alpha had one, because you never knew when some free pussy or dick was going to fall your way. And when Stiles fucked, he was pure alpha.

He pulled out a condom and some lube.

With two fingers, he pushed into the man’s ass, keeping the man in a blissful haze of arousal for the painful part. Stiles curved both fingers upward searching……for the spot. Gustav jolted in pleasure. Yep, that was it. Then, slowly kissing the man’s cheek, Stiles rolled on the condom and got the man as wet as he possibly could. Entering the virgin hole slowly, Stiles felt the man quiver under him.

“I could keep you like this” Stile said softly, as the man lay face down on the seat, “just warming my cock, like a good omega, is that what you want?” Stiles asked.

Stiles gave a particularly vicious thrust into the hole, “is that what you want?” Stiles asked again.

The man shivered.

“I don’t like it when people don’t answer me,” Stiles chuckled playfully, reaching one hand to slowly stroke the man’s hardening, dripping cock.

“Maybe you’d like me to repeat myself,” Stiles said loudly, “do you want me to keep you in my backseat,  naked, fucked out and dripping with my cum?"

“But I’m an alpha,” the man whimpered.

Stiles slapped him across the man across the face. “What kind of alpha likes getting screwed in the ass like a dirty omega bitch whore?”

The man cried as Stiles used his fingers like a cock ring, preventing the man’s orgasm.

“I do” he sobbed out. “I like it. I do”

Behind the man, Stiles’s mouth opened in a grin.

Stiles huffed as he came closer to his orgasm and released his grip on the man’s dick.

“Come” Stiles ordered.

 The man came, blasting the walls of the car with white, creamy cum.

Stiles felt tried to thrust harder, but he knew he wasn’t going to reach orgasm. He had already tried to masturbate earlier, when he was with Felipe.

He just couldn’t cum. The bond wouldn’t let him. He was being blue balled by the universe.

Stiles pulled out, hoping the sickness wouldn’t hit him before he got the car seller—Gus? Gusta?  out of his damn car.

* * *

 

Gustav pulled on his pants, and clothes, shakily. He looked at Stiles with something akin to awe, “That was fantastic. Where did you learn to fuck like that? How did you get me to do that? I’ve never—”

Stiles fixed the man with a cold glare, “I’ve had lots of practice,” _Theodore, Stiles’s mind supplied silently._

“Now do me a favour and get the fuck out of my car, I’ve got places to be,” Stiles ordered.

Stiles watched the man’s face crumple and he felt horrible. He had been complaining about being used and he had just fucked this guy, left him vulnerable and wanted to throw him away.

Usually Stiles didn’t really care so much. His partners were as used to the thrill of the chase as he was and knew that emotions were like gonorrhea.  No one wanted to catch it. But this man was a virgin to anal sex, and looked to be in his early twenties.

Stiles’s heart melted a little. He hugged the man and ruffled his hair a little, “Look, I’m really in a rush, but I really enjoyed what we did together. Thank you for giving that to me. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I think you’re beautiful,” Stiles said honestly.

Well, kind of, Gustav wasn’t bad looking.

“I just really have to go right now. Another time maybe?” Stiles suggested.

Gustav hadn’t quite recovered from Stiles’s coldness, but he managed to give Stiles a little smile.

“Perhaps” the man replied.

Stiles grinned, “tease”.

Stiles drove Gustav to the rent-a car dealer and quietly prayed the  bond backlash would not start too soon.

As he watched Gustav dismount. Stiles felt the cramps begin.

He couldn’t help but think of all the words he’d called Gustav , “ _warming my cock, naked all the time, dirty omega bitch whore”_. In the back of his head, he remembered the omega he’d kept by his desk to swallow down his load while he worked.

_Did he have dreams and hopes like me?_

Stiles shook his head, batting away the thoughts that surrounded him like an annoying swarm of flies. He needed to focus.

Stiles opened his backpack, comforted that the brown bag was still there.

Inside the bag was a pill bottle and two water bottles. He shook the contents of the pill bottle into his hand.

He only had three tablets, which was the best he could get with the paltry 1,000 dollars of cash he had on him.

Bond blockers.

He swallowed one with a swig of water from a water bottles and the cramps quieted.

He was relieved that he wouldn’t have the usual nosebleeds and headaches he got after “cheating on Derek” or whatever the bond thought he was doing. The blood from the mouth thing had stained _way_ too many shirts.

By 10 am, Stiles had escaped from Montevido and was driving along the Uruguay Argentina border.

Destination?

 Well, you'll have to read the next chapter to find out.

 

** Derek **

It was horrible. It took him three hours to get out of Buenos Aires,partially because Agent Smith insisted on proceeding through traffic with a line of black armored cars to show the “might of the OCS”. While Derek understood that the OCS was interested in using his case as a masterful political stroke, he felt like this was too much.

Derek growled at the Agent again, “Didn’t you say compulsions get weaker as time passes?”

The Agent laughed, “I said weaker, not totally ineffective. Most omegas have never learned to resist compulsions. There have only been a few cases where omegas threw off compulsions. And most of those resistant omegas were wild ones.”

Derek frowned further at the Agent’s mocking tone, “I don’t think you understand this. My omega _is_ a wild omega. He’s spent most of his life under the delusion that he is an alpha. I don’t know how strong he is”

The Agent shook his head, “The key words were: under the delusion that he is an alpha. I guarantee he never learned how to deal with his omega traits.”

“Okay,” Derek conceded, “but do you need to flaunt the OCS in everyone else’s faces?”

The Agent turned to Derek, “This is a win for the OCS. We are saving the Hale scion and catching one of the most cunning omega stealthers of our time. We need to let the world know.”

Derek grumbled with annoyance and then furrowed a brow.

“What are stealthers?”

“You don’t think Stiles is the only omega to ever go undercover as an alpha, do you? Millions of omegas do it every year. Lying about their status, faking the names on their passports, pretending to be what they are not. It’s a societal menace,” the Agent concluded.

Derek was shocked. “Omegas everywhere are pretending to be alphas? What? That’s not possible….”

Agent Smith sighed, “The omega gene is controlled by multiple alleles in an allelic series”

“What’s an allelic series?” Derek questioned

“I see you failed high school biology,” Agent Smith replied, “Basically what I mean is most omegas are not just cut and dry omegas. Some people have a genes that make them produce a lot of the omega proteins, while some omegas produce very little proteins. And most of the population falls in the middle, between omega and beta, not quite dominant, not quite submissive. A heterozygote advantage in evolution.  Evolution selects for omegas who have a good mix of submissive and dominant traits, making them more adaptable to any societal situation”

Derek felt alarmed, “So not all omegas are submissive?”

“Of course not. If all omegas were perfectly submissive, why do you think the OCS exists?”

Derek tried to puzzle through his thoughts, “So the OCS forces omegas to be submissive when they’re actually…..not?”

The Agent responded calmly. “Look, Derek, don’t you agree society works better when there’s a clear hierarchy? When everyone at the bottom listens and obeys those at the top? It doesn’t matter what nature thinks. Nature, my friend, is nasty, brutish and short,”

The Agent gestured out at the streets of Buenos Aires, “Look at this city. A lovely innovation, circa 1800s. Beautiful skyscrapers, pure electricity, clean running water. All things that don’t exist in nature. In nature, human life expectancy never exceeded 50 years of age, infant mortality was 100 or more out of a thousand births. Omegas died in pregnancy, people suffered all the time. Until humans innovated, out goes cave painting and stupid drawings on the wall. In comes the agricultural revolution, grains, and our ancestors could stay in one place, pass down land, create societies. Art. Literature. Nature is infinitively perfectible, Derek.”

“The OCS can’t be doing that much  good if there are millions of stealth omegas every year,” Derek argued.

“We are catching more of them every year. Hopefully this win will send a message to those pesky omega rights organizations,” the Agent responded.

Derek felt something unsettling sit in his stomach.

“I—” Derek began, “maybe we should give omegas some rights you know. I mean it would be easier than catching all these stealthers.”

The Agent gave him an irritated glare.

“I’m not saying omegas should have the same rights as alphas or anything. That’s ridiculous. They couldn’t survive on their own, too weak, too submissive and most of them aren’t that smart. But maybe, we could, I don’t know send them to school so they could learn how to cook better or something, allow them to choose their own jobs. Little things” Derek said in a pacifying tone.

The Agent growled angrily, and Derek could smell the Agent’s sour tang of alpha fill the air again, “Do you really think these radical omegas will be happy with just getting more schooling? They’ll overturn the whole system. They’ll want jobs and houses and authority and all manner of silly nonsense like that. The hierarchy will be destroyed and everything will fall into chaos. What do you think would happen if omegas could say no to an alpha mate? The birth rate would plummet, alpha suicides would skyrocket…..No. Derek. You can’t reason with an omega. It has no reason. An omega is no better than an animal,”

Derek blanched. He was surprised by the Agent’s venom. Such remarks were no longer acceptable in polite society. Instead, people preferred to refer to omegas as “mentally challenged” or “gifted with a different set of skills”.

“You will not speak that way about omegas, Agent Smith” Derek insisted.

The Agent sighed, “Noted. Mr. Hale”

Derek and the Agent along with  a few other OCS associates took a private ship and docked in Montevido. The usual ferry ride is an hour. Using OCS transport, Derek and his crew got into Montevido in thirty minutes.

The Hotel Sofitel had been notified to keep custody of the guest in room 17. Derek disembarked from the ferry, hopeful that he’d get a chance to meet his mate when a call reached Agent Snith’s cell phone.

The man turned to Derek after sliding the phone into his pocket and Derek just _knew._

“What happened? Did he escape?” Derek asked.

Smith nodded, “I underestimated him. 98% of omegas can’t resist a command from an alpha partner, according to OCS tests”

“I told you” Derek bellowed. “You were wasting time with showmanship and all that nonsense, while my omega has slipped out of our hands once again. Stiles isn’t like those docile omegas you keep in cages at the institute. He’s a wild omega who doesn’t want to be caught”

The Agent tried to regain control of the situation, “Look, we’ll find who he last spoke to. Scour the city, shut down traffic for a few hours. We will find him, Derek. He can’t have gotten out of the city yet,”

Derek looked at the Agent in anger, “I think maybe you should let me lead the search for a while. Let’s try to brainstorm. If you were Stiles where would you want to escape to?”

The Agent looked suitable chastised, “Paraguy. It’s a barbarian jungle where omegas actually lord over alphas,”

Derek continued, “He could go by plane or……car.”

The Agent pointed out, “By car is riskier.”

“But,” Derek explained, “it’s also harder to trace a car. With a plane, we can track the flight he took and intercept him at the airport, but with a car, we have no idea what he’s driving, where he is…”

Derek ordered the men in black suits standing around him, “You. Check all the flights headed to Paraguay.”

Derek pointed to a second man, “I need you to call every car rental agency near Hotel Sofitel, see if they’ve seen anyone with Stiles’s build.”

“And you,” Derek pointed to a third man, “I want to know of any car thefts reported between yesterday and today”

Smith nodded, as he listened to Derek’s orders. As soon as everyone left, he pulled Derek aside.

“Derek?” Smith asked. “Hotel Sofitel also wants you to pay their bill. Apparently Stiles ran away without settling the check. The cost is 1,000 dollars a night”

Derek shook his head, with a rueful smile, “Leave it to my omega to skip out without paying the bill of the most expensive hotel in town. It’s a damn good thing I’m rich.”

Derek chuckled. His kind of liked Stiles’s behavior. This chase had allowed him to see so many different sides of Stiles, and understand why the man would be a perfect mate. Instead of the chase scaring him away from Stiles, it almost made him want to win the omega more.

Derek reached for the bond, ready to chide Stiles for running off and was hurtled into—

a dark void of empty space.

He heard the Agent’s voice like a train from far off as he faded into blackness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just love the idea of Stiles as a stealth fucker. Fucking all those alphas despite the fact that he's an omega. And we'll learn more about Theodore later. haha.  
> Interesting Notes: I really like mixing real life with fantasy in these works. So Uruguay does score a 21 on the corruption scale. You do need to take a ferry to go from Montevideo to Buenos Aires.
> 
>  
> 
> And, if you read the scene, the harsh nature of the sex should strike you as strange?  
> What exactly is Stiles doing there?  
> The one hint I would give is this: Felipe is one of the few people Stiles really cared about and had sex with , most of the time, Stiles uses sex as a means to an end.
> 
> Complications........ hahaha


	7. Black market

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Stiles learns why you don't buy stuff off the black market

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The tags. descriptions of pain and a hint of family violence. Just one slap.

** Stiles **

Stiles wound down the windows of the brown 1990 mazda by hand. The wind ruffled against his skin, the sun beat against his cheek as his palms kissed the leather steering wheel. The highway beckoned in front of him, glorious and asphalt black, while beyond the horizon of lush forest, green dreams lingered evermore.

Stiles had forgotten that he _loved_ to drive.

The joy of driving wasn’t just about  the sweet, arousing smell of gasoline or the rasp of leather on skin or even the  comforting hum of the engine thrumming in the background, as steady and sure as the pulse  which jumped at the corner of his neck.

 it was about freedom.

It was about the way an open highway beckoned before you, wide with the hope of a new day, the feeling of your foot pressed against the accelerator, like flying.

It was the knowledge that you controlled you destiny.

In New York, Stiles had taken taxis everywhere because, as any New Yorker will tell you, having a car in New York City is more trouble than it’s worth.  All the rich and important people took taxis or had personal chauffeurs to drive them wherever they wished.

Stiles was glad he hadn’t forgotten how to drive, he still remembered his father’s hand over his, explaining how to turn and stop and parallel park, teaching him what a yield sign meant and when he had the right of way. He was only sixteen then and he had just learned less than a year ago

that he was an omega.

Stiles had not grown up knowing that his father changed his designation at birth. As a young child he was no more submissive than the other children, nor more nurturing. He went through the normal phases all kids go through. When he was five or six, he wanted to be a dinosaur. At seven or eight, he watched Toy-Story and Power Rangers and pretended he had mystical magical powers. He would run around for hours with his best friend Scott, pretending the sticks they had gathered were light sabers.

At 12, his mother had died of frontotemporal dementia. Words like “progressive aphasia” were whispered around him. But all Stiles knew was his mother struggled to explain basic concepts to him. She fell often and her body twitched strangely. He knew his mother was sick, but in a young child’s world people do not die of sickness, they get better. A 12 year old Stiles had tried to make his mother chicken soup, and ended up with a watery mixture that tasted rather terrible.

He had brought his mother soup in bed and asked her to get better.

But this wasn’t something soup could fix.

Six months later Stiles found himself holding his mother’s withered hand, surrounded by beeping machines that had buzzed and a thin line on a projector. He had only had six months to try and understand what it meant to be dead, gone, forever.

He just could not understand it. At the wake, he stared at his mother’s body, smelling of cheap perfume, muscles locked in artificial rigor mortis, eyes closed peacefully. He thought that she was perhaps just sleeping and that if he could poke her, she would wake up. It had to be a dream.

It had taken a lot of therapy, and Stiles didn’t really like to think about that time, about a breakdown was so complete, that Stiles ended up needing to repeat a year of school.

But there were good things that blossomed even in sadness. Stiles grew closer with his father than he ever was, and Stiles discovered the joy of numbers.

When he got home from the outpatient facility, he realized that he couldn’t stay in Beacon Hills any longer, Beacon Hills smelled of sadness and pain and loss. Stiles wanted to move on, get a new start. So he started positioning himself for a scholarship to a boarding school. He read esoteric books he was not sure he liked, and happened to do pretty well in a few math competitions. He wrote and polished essays, trying to expose the marrow of his soul or whatever that meant to prep high schools admissions departments. Exeter wasn’t his first app or even the school he loved the most, Stiles knew that chances of getting into one of the top ten boarding schools were slim. He’d applied on a whim and had somehow managed to get in. There you go, life was weird that way.

His first year at boarding school was tough, he was a kid from a lower middle class home in a small town. He had no idea how to deal with the wealthy privileged atmosphere he’d found himself in.

It was when he was a young freshman, struggling to pass Exeter’s reputably difficult classes and find a way to fit in that he had met Theodore.

Stiles remembered it like it was yesterday.

How could he forget?

Introductory calculus class. The teacher was handing out exam sheets, those huge black papers filled with lines and equations, calculations, numbers, all  quantifiable things that made Stiles feel safe.

Three rows behind him a blonde haired, blue eyed kid with a clean cut face was smacking bubble gum.

“Aren’t you worried about this test?” Another student asked the blonde haired kid.

“Nah, I got this covered man”

“What? You don’t even study.”

“Well, that’s why I fuck the teacher,” chuckled the kid.

And that’s the first thing Stiles remembers about Theodore.

Theodore was a user. And it wasn’t just sex, Theodore used drugs, blackmail, secrets, lies and power to get what he wanted from others. The rumor mill always turned smoothly with tales of his exploits and at a small school like Exeter, that rumor mill was very small.

According to the rumors, Theodore was

……..selling pot from his room

…….sneaking out of the dorm to do cocaine on the side

……fucking the headmaster

…….George Davis bottomed for him

…….spent the summer visiting brothels in Thailand?

No one knew which rumors were true and which were fake, Theo never confirmed or denied anything, just smiled with that secret alpha smile, showing a hint of sharp teeth. Theodore was one of those men of mystery on campus, the men every alpha or beta girl swooned for, that all the men were secretly jealous of.

So Stiles wasn’t too shocked when one late night he stumbled into a party he was _not_ invited to in a misguided attempt to seem cool. Nursing a beer, Stiles wandered up and down the old house, shivering slightly in the New Hampshire cold. Hearing strange sounds from a room on the upstairs floor drove Stiles to investigate.

Matt Davies was a junior, two years above Stiles, black hair, green eyes, stocky build. He had a girlfriend, Alice, who loved him. He was captain of the rugby team and loved to row, incredibly smart and kind and handsome and he was…. blowing Theodore Krantz on the dirty floor of a broken down house.

Stiles stood there shocked, his mouth opened in a slight croak.

After rubbing his eyes in shock for a few seconds, Stiles turned to go and then Theodore turned around, looking right at Stiles and smiled wolfishly.

“Like what you see?” he mouthed.

Stiles dropped his beer to the ground and ran away.

Later, Theodore caught Stiles outside of his calculus class. Since Stiles had tested so well in maths, he had been allowed to skip the more basic math classes like algebra and ugh, geometry, in favour of calculus.

Though Stiles loved Calculus, it was really really hard. Most math was about adding or subtracting, not bending reality. He would walk out of class all day, his mind spinning with Zero’s paradoxes, arrows never reaching their targets, derivatives and partial derivatives which he had to practice again and again as he tried to work his mind around what each proof meant.

Stiles had stayed later to ask the professor about a certain problem as the class emptied. After getting the answer to his question, Stiles scooped up his books in one arm and got ready to leave when Theo ambushed him.

Theo leaned in and sniffed Stiles on the neck. After a long inhale, Theo whispered, “I know what you are.”

Stiles looked at Theo as if he had sprouted horns and started talking about a passageway to Narnia.

“Look, Theo, if this is about what I saw last Saturday. I promise I won’t say anything. I don’t care”, Stiles stated calmly.

Theo stared at Stiles with those impossibly wicked looking blue eyes, “when you feel like knives are crawling under your skin, and you don’t know who else to turn to, call meI’ll be the only one who can keep you safe.”

With that Theodore walked away, leaving Stiles flummoxed and confused.

* * *

 

It’s an 8 hour drive nonstop from Montevido to the tiny town of Riviera which sits right on the Uruguay and Brazil border. Stiles drove along on the Brigadier Gral Fructuoso Riviera/Route 5 highway trying to form a plan, and figure out how he could smuggle himself into Brazil. There were two ways he could get into Paraguay from his destination. He could cross into Argentina and drive to Paraguay from there or he could go through Brazil. Brazil was known to have a more lenient policy towards letting omegas drive than Argentina, so he was choosing to go to Brazil. The states he would pass through in Brazil included Parana and Rio Grande do Sul, large, but also very culturally mixed states where he hoped to blend in as one of the crowd. He tried to weigh the risks.

If he crossed the border to Argentina, he would get to Paraguay faster but he would have to pass through poorer, less populated villages like Posadas, Resistencia and La Formosa. Also, he would also stand out like a sore thumb, leaving him vulnerable to OCS capture. Even more, the poorer villages were filled with desperate men and women who were dying to escape Argentina’s brutal repressive regime for the relative freedom of Paraguay. Gangs like Dos Equis were known to capture and rape any new omega that ventured onto their territory. Stiles just didn’t want to risk it.

Brazil was not without its dangers. He would be taking the longer route around, and it would cause him to waste 5 more hours that he couldn’t afford to lose. But he knew from governmental data that most successful border crossings into Paraguay happened by way of the Friendship Bridge and Stiles was not one to deny the power of statistics.

He’d “accidentally” lifted those statistics from a governmental client’s database. The numbers showed that once he made it into Brazil, his chances of successfully crossing into Paraguay jumped to 65%. If he took the Argentina route, he had a 35% chance of crossing safely, but a 55% chance of either dying or being sold into slavery. Stiles hated the idea of risking his life on a 65% chance, but hey, he was out of fucking options, because well, omegas didn’t have options .

* * *

 

It was the summer after his freshman year that he had confronted his father. Stiles had dealt with a pretty shitty freshman year. He arrived at the airport with red rings under his eyes, looking as if he hadn’t slept or washed his hair or bathed for a week. Stiles had not said a word as his father drove him home. It wasn’t until Stiles dropped his last rucksack onto the living room floor that he turned to face his dad by the glimmering light of a single lightbulb.

“Did you know?”

His father only looked confused.

Stiles continued on, pressed by a slowly burgeoning anger that spread through his skin, “Know that I was an omega?”

The Sheriff’s face hardened, his mouth straightened to a resolute line.

“Don’t say that”

“Say what?” Stiles screamed, “the truth? I am an omega. I am. I want you to hear me say it. How could you have let me go off to boarding school without telling me? You left me open like a sheep for fucking slaughter, in the midst of all those alphas? Why?” Stiles felt his voice break on the last word, the note warbling as if he was still just an innocent young boy who had never seen puberty.

The Sheriff was never a man for physical abuse. No matter how naughty Stiles was as a young boy, even when Stiles drew scribbly circles all over the wall with black sharpie had the Sheriff ever raised a hand to Stiles.

But that night, he slapped Stiles across the face so hard Stiles’s head whipped in the other direction.

“Do you even know what being an omega means Stiles? Forget about school, forget about work, and forget about anything but going to the home of some alpha you barely know and being raped from 14 until you die in childbirth.

And that’s the lucky ones. Is that what you want for yourself? Is that what you think I wanted for you? So, yes, I hid your designation and I didn’t tell you about it because that’s what a real dad does. And now you think you can come into my house crying about being an omega getting angry about a choice I made to protect you. If I ever hear you call yourself omega, I’ll slap you again until you remember that is _not who you are._ You’re an alpha Stiles and you need to remember that every damn day of your life. Live it, believe it because the moment you forget, the moment your mask slips, you’re dead. Now stop wallowing in your own shit and help me carry these bags upstairs,” the Sheriff commanded.

The next morning, a pack of heat suppressant pills appeared on Stiles’s bed table.

And that was all the Sheriff ever had to say about it.

The bruise on Stiles’s face lingered for a week, turning blue, then a lovely shade of purple before it faded into nonexistence.

Yet the wound inside remained.

* * *

 

Blissful silence isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but Stiles couldn’t say he didn’t enjoy not feeling the continual pressure of the bond inside him. The bond blockers were working great, and he felt nothing until halfway through his trip, when he stopped at a small town named Durazno to get gas and coffee and found himself throwing up blood.

* * *

 

**Derek**

When Derek woke up, his head was ringing, eyes blurring out of focus. It took a few seconds to figure out where he was. White bed. No underwear. Beeping monitors. He was in the hospital again.

Sitting in a chair by the side of his bed was someone he had not expected to see: Laura.

Laura stood and fixed her piercing hazel eyes on him, brushing back a strand of dark black hair.

“Derek, you’re awake”.

Derek felt a prickle of alarm, “How long was I out?”

Laura shook her head in anger, “for a few hours. Luckily I got here to take you to the hospital when I did”

“When _did_ you get here?” Derek asked pointedly.

“Two and a half hours ago. I flew in to see how the search for your omega was going. Imagine my surprise when I find out Stiles has slipped through your fingers again! Why didn’t you just break the bond when I asked you to? Can you imagine what having a badly trained omega will do to the family name? The Enquirer will never stop writing about it!” Laura complained angrily.

“What it too much to ask for a Dear Brother, How are you feeling? Are you okay, can I get you a cup of water?” Derek quipped.

“Shut up Derek.” Laura said flatly. Approaching the bed, she smoothed Derek’s hair and shifted into a softer tone, “I’m just worried because your omega is using bond blockers” Laura explained, trying hopelessly to stay calm.

Derek was shocked, “Bond blockers?”

“Yes, Bond Blockers” another nasally voice echoed Derek, Agent Smith strolled into the room,  “Do you see why we can’t give freedoms to omegas?” Smith asked in an I-told-you-so tone.

Derek tried to make sense of it.

_Bond Blockers_

Bond blocker drugs were extremely dangerous and only found on the black market. They could block the bond between an alpha and an omega for days at a time. But the problem was that a one sided bond could destroy the second bond partner or even kill him or her. Bond Blockers were only really used by alphas who wanted to have affairs and even that was a crime because one day of a blocked bond could cause an omega to go insane. Just using a bond blocker was punishable by up to 15 years in prison if the user was an alpha. If the user was an omega, he or she could go to prison for anywhere from 4 to 6 years.

He couldn’t believe Stiles would do this to him. He could have _died._

 “How am I even alive?” Derek asked, confused

“Luckily very few cartels make pure bond blockers any more. The OCS, has done a remarkable job of cracking down on those cartels that do sell pure bond blockers. This means that your omega probably bought a tainted batch and the effects only worked for a few hours” Agent Smith explained.

Derek took a second to try to digest this information. He was filled with anger and sadness. How could his mate do something so reckless and cruel? Stiles was not stupid, he had to know the risks. Stiles just didn’t care. Did he really want to be mated to someone who cared so little for his life and the lives of those he loved? Someone so cruel, so calculating that they would be willing to use bond blockers just to get an upper hand in a misguided escape attempt?

Derek was brought from his reverie by Agent Smith’s droning voice.

“You will be pleased to know that we checked the security cameras of every street and talked to every rental agency. Stiles did escape by car. He bought a brown mazda from a man named Gustav. We’ve detained him for questioning,” the Agent finished.

Despite Derek’s fury with Stiles, the alpha deep inside him still perked up at the sound of his mate’s presence.

‘I hope you haven’t beaten this one have to death yet,” Derek noted darkly, “send him in”.

A few minutes later, the man known as Gustav walked in.

Dark haired, darker skinned, with piercing brown eyes. The man smelled of alpha, but not cloyingly so. He had a short stature, perhaps due to low nutrition in childhood. A nose that was too big for his face, chubby cheeks, and weirdly asymmetrical eyes completed the look. He was, in short, not a man one would call beautiful…….

_But he reeked of Stiles_

The alpha part of Derek snarled in fury. If Derek was stronger, he would have probably strangled the guy.

“You fucked my mate” Derek growled, eyes thinned to pinpricks.

The man scratched his scalp awkwardly, “Well, I kind of didn’t know he was your mate, then. I’m really sorry man”.

“You _fucker_ ” Derek snarled, “Do you always go around fucking other people’s mates? You had to have smelled an alpha on him, had to have smelled me on him. You knew”

Gustave raised both palms up in a placating gesture as he backed towards the wall, “First, I did not know he was an omega, I just know he smelled really really good, like the olfactory equivalent of crack. I couldn’t help it. I think he drugged me or something. Second,” the man gulped, “ He …… he fucked me”

“You’re lying!” Laura piped up from where she had been sitting quietly in the back of the room.

“I’m not, no senor,” Gustav pleaded, “Eso es  la veracidad”

Derek ‘s eyes narrowed further, if it was even possible, “ say it again, slowly”

“Your     Omega    fucked    me” Gustav repeated as slowly and calmly as he could.

Derek listened to the man’s heartbeat.

“He’s not lying” Derek said incredulously.

Laura had never looked so thrown in her life, “Is your mate even an omega?” she asked Derek.

* * *

 

**Stiles**

Stiles has never ever felt so much pain in his life. It was worse than the pain of disobeying Derek’s command, unrelenting, soul sucking agony. Stiles is crying, even though alphas never cry, tears spill from his eyes as he tries to drive while he nurses the pain in his stomach. Inside his stomach, he feels that vultures are ripping him apart, his head is pounding as the bond goes from being closed to yawning open wide. He’s dry heaving but there’s nothing left in his stomach.

Stiles makes it through 5 or 10 minutes of god-awful terribleness until he cannot take it anymore and pulls up into a small side road in Tacuarembo. Stiles tries to close his eyes, hoping that the pain will get better.

_The drugs must have been mixed with something bad._ Stiles thinks rationally.

What could it be? Stiles wonders. Molly? Bath salts? Ecstasy? Heroin? Coke?

None of those drugs should have this effect.

The pain keeps building like a great wave that keeps gathering strength…………

And then it crashes in his stomach and Stiles can’t explain it, he can’t keep himself from whimpering, he stuffs a knuckle into his mouth to keep himself from screaming.

Throughout this entire chase Stiles has always felt pretty sure of himself. _He’d get away from Derek, he had to._ He would escape, he would get to Paraguay. Other Omegas had done it, why not him? He’d rebuild his life, one step at a time. He would find a firm to hire him, he had skills.

Even at his darkest moments, when Derek nearly caught him in Montevido or when Felipe betrayed him Stiles never thought, never imagined he might fail.

Stiles looked up at the ceiling of his car with tears in his eyes,

“ _That’s it,”_ he thought, _“I’m going to die here”_    

The world was becoming more fuzzy, people blurred to indistinct shapes as if they were figures in an Impressionist painting. Blood trickled out of his nose, his ears, dripped from his eyes like red tears.

Stiles took a labored breath, his lungs rattled in his chest and felt the pain start to slip away, he could barely feel anything anymore. He was so tired. So sleepy and he had been running all this time, nonstop without a break. Make he would lie here, as the world ebbed away.

Stiles never knew why he did it. But he felt himself whisper a message along the bond, _“Goodbye Derek. Tell my father that I loved him”_

* * *

 

**Derek**

     “Goodbye Derek. Tell my father that I loved him”  

Derek felt those words resonate through him, felt the bond weaken, and his mate’s voice quieten and call out those last words to him.

He stood up in shock, nearly falling over on his weakened limbs.

“Laura, I just heard Stiles tell me goodbye, across the bond, I- I think he’s dying”

Laura’s face paled, “Oh my God, we have to do something.”

“Agent Smith?” Derek called.

The Agent walked over to where Derek sat on the ground.

“My mate’s dying and I need help to save him” Derek pleaded

 “The bond breaking drug, if cut with the wrong chemicals, can have some terrible side effects. Stiles could die, but hopefully he hasn’t taken too many pills” The Agent said calmly.

Derek tried to think through his panic, “Could we put out an amber alert or something?”

“An amber alert is for a missing child. Stiles may certainly be acting like a wayward kid, but he’s a full grown adult”.

“Ok. But the Uruguayan government must have some way of communicating directly with people. Through television or….” A lightbulb flashed in Derek’s mind, “radio. Send out a message mentioning the car Stiles was driving, its make and model throughout all the radio stations in Uruguay”

“There are more than 50 radio stations in Uruguay” the Agent stated in irritation.

“Look, I don’t have a lot of time here. People generally listen to radio stations when they are in the car, driving, a time when they are most likely to be on the lookout for Stiles’s car” Derek reasoned.

“Do you know how many brown mazdas there are in Uruguay? It would be almost impossible to narrow it down!” the Agent exclaimed.

“But we have more criteria we could use. We only look for mazdas on streets headed away from Montevido. Judging by how sick Stiles is now, he’s probably parked on the side of the road somewhere. He won’t want to get caught, so he’s probably on an abandoned or little used road” Derek deduced.

“Wonderful Sherlock. So I have to find the make and model of a common car, in the dullest shade possible in an abandoned road somewhere outside of Montevido. That will be easy”, the Agent said sarcastically.

Derek simply growled and releases some alpha pheromones.

The Agent paled and turned to leave, carelessly slamming the door.

Laura had been watching the whole interaction silently, “That whole interaction was strange” Laura noted.

“How so?” Derek asked.

“He gave in so easily. Usually one would expect an alpha to fight harder or get angrier when you used alpha tone. He just walked away….” Laura trailed off, wonderingly.

Derek shrugged.

“We’ll deal with Agent later. Help me think of ways to reach Stiles” Derek asked, ignoring Laura’s comment

* * *

 

** Stiles **

Stiles woke up to a dark room, lying on some soft squishy surface that felt like a bed. And we all know that you never want to wake up in some random dark room.

He tried to move, but he felt like he was tied to something. He opened his eyes and tried to feel for his things, jackets, keys, money hidden in jacket. He couldn’t see or feel anything on the bed beside him.

A voice rose from inside the darkness, “You’re awake”.

“Yes, I am” affirmed Stiles, “Now this is all a big misunderstanding. If you want to kidnap me and sell me into slavery, I can tell you I am worth more to you alive and not a slave. I can pay you well to set me free. We can make a deal, but please , you know, don’t kill me or anything, because that would be very very bad” Stiles found himself babbling in a way he hadn’t since he was in grade school, since before his mother died. But hey, he had just been kidnapped by an unknown figure and was not feeling quite up to his usual 100% calm. He was running at maybe 85%, ok, make that 54%. And he was allowed to be a teensy bit nervous when talking to his captor, because, you know he was not James Bond or anything and well, it would be stupid not to be terrified.

The man shushed all of Stiles’s babbling with six calm words, “I’m not going to hurt you”

The man ruffled Stiles’s dark hair.

Stiles knew this wasn’t the right time to unleash sarcasm but he couldn’t help it, “I’d believe you a lot more if you’d take untie the blindfold I’m wearing or turn on the lights”

The man sighed, “You’re not wearing a blindfold, kid.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> duh duh duh.  
> Life has been kicking my A** and taking names lately so I couldn't update last week. So two chappies today to make up for it.  
> haha.


	8. Comfort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Stiles finds a comforter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no real warnings here. Disability maybe?

**Derek**

“The agent’s right,” Laura whispered, “trying to figure out where Stiles is by the make and model of his car is a pretty impossible task,”

“People do the same thing for Amber Alerts all the time,” Derek argued.

“Yes, and how many kidnapped kids are found? Not many. If you really want to find Stiles there’s only one thing to do,” Laura let her words hang for a moment.

“And what can I do?”

“Widen the bond and speak to Stiles one on one”

“I can’t”, Derek blurted, shutting Laura down, “I don’t know how and Stiles keeps closing the bond on me. Anyway, only a few Alphas and Omegas can carry out bondspeak. It only works if both partners have a close connection and let’s be honest, Stiles, doesn’t like me. At all”

“But you bondspoke with Stiles a few days ago, maybe if you reached deep within yourself and meditated, you could find that string again” Laura suggested.

“I don’t know.”

“There must be something deep inside both of you that is drawing you guys together. Stiles doesn’t want an alpha and you’ve never felt tempted by an omegas before, but this one time, you both are thrown together, pulled deeply by some connecting thread no one can see. Something inside of you resonates with him. Find it and find him,” Laura looked into her brother’s eyes expectantly.

Derek huffed in annoyance at his older bossy sister, “Ok”

* * *

 

Derek spent the entire night deep in meditation, trying to reach the mysterious place inside of him that “resonated” with Stiles. Derek rolled his eyes at Laura’s wording. He knew this wouldn’t work, why was he trying so damn hard? It was midnight and he had finally been released from the hospital, and he was sitting on the floor of a nearby hotel. He angrily, threw his book on meditation across the room and crossed over to the window. From the window, he could see the hustle and bustle of Montevido’s streets, the clean clear lines of sidewalks and deep black asphalt roads, the city like a beacon of light in the darkness, a candle on a hill. He wondered, as he looked at the effortlessly pulsing underbelly of the city what Stiles thought of as he stared at this same sky.

 _Probably thinking of ways to get rid of me_ , Derek thought wryly, and laughed a little to himself.

_But why? Why does Stiles hate me so much? It can’t be my face, or my actions of my money, he doesn’t even know me. And I don’t know him._

Inside him he felt a yearning to understand, a desire as deep as an underground cavern reaching out from him into the faceless void of the smoke obscured night sky.

_Who are you, little omega of mine?_

_Who are you, Stiles?_

And he felt a click.

Then he fell to his knees as the bond blasted wide open.

* * *

 

**Stiles**

“I cannot be blind,” Stiles scoffed at the man, “you don’t know what you’re talking about. The batch I picked up was from De Oro and his stuff is quality”

The man replied, “But that doesn’t mean the dealer doesn’t add some stuff to it. Nor does it mean that it was not tampered with. Either way, you knew the risk of illegal bond blockers, if you choose to take them, you accept the risks,”

Stiles desperately scratched at his eyes, leaving scars over his eyelids “You’re a goddamn liar. You did something to me. And now I can’t see,” Stiles screamed.

“I’ll kill you.”

The man grabbed Stiles’s hands and tried to restrain the man. “You’re not going to kill me. I’m your best hope of getting into Brazil alive.”

Stiles quieted at that information, body dropped into a sudden stillness.

“I’m a truck driver, move goods from Uruguay to Brazil and I know everyone at the customs office. I’ve got a secret compartment in the back of my truck, I’ll hide you there when you’re strong enough to move. Then I can get you through the customs office in Riviera to Brazil. I would take you to Paraguay, but I’m being watched and it’s not safe,” the man explained.

Stiles took a second to digest this information. Then an eyebrow furrowed.

“Why are you doing this? For me?”

“The short answer is that I’m Charon and I work with the river Styx of the underworld. The long answer is,” the man swallowed, “my daughter was kidnapped by sex traffickers from my home when she was barely fifteen. And I want to make sure no one ever goes through what happened to my daughter,”

“She died?” Stiles asked.

The man replied in a gravelly voice, “I don’t know if she’s alive or dead”

Stiles didn’t know much about the underworld. As an alpha he’d never had to think about silly things like omegas escaping. But everyone had heard rumors, of a secret group of people, holes and boxes in every house, helping omegas escape their lives and miseries to the free land of Paraguay. Every member of the underground had code names rooted in Greek, Roman and Egyptian mythology. He knew from his college lit classes that Charon was a ferryman who brought dead souls across the river to the world of the dead.

Stiles tried to think, “How do I know you are who you say you are?”

Stiles heard the man’s footsteps retreating from the room. In a few minutes, the man came back and held out an object to Stiles.

“What is this?” Stiles asked, feeling the heavy metal, the long bar and the ornate top. “Is it a cross?”

The man laughed. “Of course not. The cross is a symbol of death. This is the ankh, it’s a symbol of life. It is this ankh that all members of the underworld carry, to symbolize eternal life. Because this world we live in, in these hierarchies, with omegas at the bottom and alphas at the top, pointless wars and overt sexuality, stupid violence, a world that commodifies us into boxes and things to be sold, that breaks families, homes, sells people, that’s death. We are trying to bring the light of eternal life to everyone.” The man said feverently.

Stiles wasn’t sure about the things the man had said. Back in school he used to make fun of guys like that, he called them socialists or freedom fighters. He hated their patchouli and their radical notions, they were all silly potheads, while he was a respectable guy. But Stiles didn’t have time to think about that nonsense.

Tentatively, Stiles tried to look up or in the direction he thought the man’s voice—it was a man right? — was coming from

 “Will I be blind forever?”

The man stopped mid rant, “I don’t know,” he said gently, “Sometimes, in cases like this, we see omegas get better, but other times they never do. It depends on how strong the dose is, the stuff mixed with it, and how many doses you took,”

Stiles closed his eyes and prayed to a God he didn’t believe in that he would be one of the lucky ones.

 _For once, God,_ Stiles thought, _you owe me this much._

* * *

 

**Derek**

When Derek came to, the first thing he felt was fear, deep and unrelenting, pounding in his chest.

He was surprised as he shook himself and got up from the floor.

He knew the fear was not his, it was Stiles.

He pulled the bond to the forefront of his mind.

“Stiles?” Derek asked.

“Why are you so afraid?”

He could feel Stiles trying to ignore him, so he imagined the love he had for his mother or sister and wrapped Stiles in it, the feeling like the warmest childhood blanket, like a favorite pillow.

Derek felt Stiles respond quietly.

“I’m blind”

Derek felt horror and sadness strike him, but also a faint sense of irritation. His mate was blind and this was a tragedy. But….Stiles had to have known the side effects of bond blockers, and how dangerous they were.

“I’m so sorry Stiles”

“No you’re not. I know, because I used to be one of you, ruling the world, not afraid of anything. Alphas are never sorry for the things they do. You don’t care that by pursuing this bond you forced me to leave my house, my home, and my job, everything I loved and now here I am! Blind and so terrified. And I can’t even hate you because the bond won’t let me”

“Believe me, Stiles,” Derek assured, “I never wanted you to leave your job and your home and everything. You didn’t have to run from me. I don’t beat or hurt omegas. I’m a good guy.”

Stiles laughed bitterly.

“You don’t beat or hurt omegas. You deserve a medal. Am I supposed to give you a trophy? Or extra damn bonus points for being a normal person? Tell me this, Derek, what if your sister was an omega? What if because of her scent, she had to go live with someone she had never met or even known because of something as silly as a “designation”. What if she had to give up everything she ever had? Her job. Her life. Her loves.  To go follow some random guy. Would you be okay with that? Is that what you would want for your sister? Or your daughter?” Stiles raged.

“Look, Stiles, you could keep your job, you—“ Derek began.

“SHUT UP! You bastard. How could I keep my job? Do you think Baroff and Sons hires omegas? Do you even know that omegas aren’t allowed to go to school or learn anything beyond reading, writing, cooking and pleasing your alpha? If I was an omega, do you even think my life could be possible? I wouldn’t be able to own property or have money. Even the smallest thing would be taken from me”

Derek felt a sharp sting in his heart, “Look, we can work together. I can make them reinstate you. My name can open doors. Just come back. Come home.”

“Right, open doors,” Stiles growled, “because I want to spend my entire life being the token omega who only got where he was because of his alpha. Because I want to fight an uphill losing battle against alpha prejudice. This isn’t a daytime soap opera, Derek. It’s my life. I was so happy before you came in to it. I just want a peaceful life. Why are you doing this to me?” Stiles sobbed.

And Derek could feel Stiles’s pain. The raw agony ripping at his heart, swelling into the space, choking the air and light out of everything until he felt like his soul had been bruised.

After listening to Stiles cry for a few minutes, Derek whispered, “Stiles”

“Yes?” his omegas sounded faint over the bond.

Derek was going to say something to defend himself, but then he realized that he couldn’t. He didn’t know enough about omega rights or the laws and research about omegas. He stopped himself and decided to ask another question.

“Can I hold you? Please.” Derek asked, hoping Stiles wouldn’t refuse the comfort.

A long silence.

“Okay”

* * *

 

**Stiles**

Stiles couldn’t bring himself to refuse the comfort Derek had offered. He had woken up to pitch black again today. Charon had planned to give him one more day to rest before they started going. Already, Stiles had started to feel better, his stomach cramps decreasing. He was even able to drink a few spoons of chicken soup this morning.

But he was still blind.

Stiles had no idea how he would navigate through Brazil with a handicap, during the most dangerous leg of his journey.

He had never felt so alone.

And as he was praying quietly again, he felt the bond opened.

He had not meant to rage at Derek, but how could the alpha be so clueless, so stupid?

The fury and pain washed over him, getting the better of him.

He was surprised when the alpha, at the end of his rant, just asked to hold him.

Stiles normally wouldn’t accept the comfort, but he couldn’t deny his pain right now and it was just too much for him. Perhaps comforting him would distract Derek from the search?

So he said okay.

Immediately Stiles was covered with a blanket of love and affection. He could almost feel his alpha through the bond, sweet and spicy, and it strummed something deep inside of him. He felt like he had found his childhood pillow, he felt like he had gotten a hug from someone he loved and cared about very much. Derek couldn’t actually hold him, he was far away, but Stiles could feel his arms around through the bond, shielding him, warming him, covering him with a feeling of peace.

Derek started to hum some bars of an unknown lullaby through the bond, and Stiles could feel Derek’s breath on his cheek,

like a hand ruffling his hair,

 a heated body next to him, keeping him warm. His skin flushed.

_It felt so good._

He felt safe again, he could feel his Derek’s sadness echo in him, like a distant reflection of pain and he couldn't help closing his eyes as his heartbeat softened and he tumbled into lavender dreams. A tiny sound emitted from him, but he was too deeply asleep to even notice it.

* * *

 

**Derek**

Derek felt Stiles steady, felt sweet contentment through the bond as his omega drifted off to sleep. He hummed a childhood lullaby to Stiles, and his alpha side puffed in pleasure at feeling his omega’s peace.

As Stiles drifted off to sleep, he heard a dull, thrumming sound.

Stiles was _purring_ in contentment.

The purr was an omega sound that had rarely been heard in recent times.

When an omega felt safe and completely secure in the presence of his alpha, he or she might purr, or release a vibration from deep within his or her throat. It was deeply instinctual, and only a few cases had been recorded.

Derek knew only one thing.

 He wanted to hear it again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was pure cutesyness guys. I kind of died when writing that, so adorable.  
> Things are going to get a lot worse for Stiles before they get better. In the first leg of this race, Stiles had the advantage, Stiles was winning the battle between himself and his body. But in the next few chapters we're going to see Stiles in much less control than he was.


	9. Charon and the River of Lethe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Stiles begins to cross the river.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no real warnings, this is a pretty PC chapter. Perhaps the only warning would be the Socratic method of questioning.

**Derek**

“What?” Laura snapped, “You didn’t even ask him to tell you where he was?”

Derek tried to explain, “my omega was in pain and trying to fight with him really wasn’t my first priority—”

“What do you mean _it wasn’t your first priority!?!_ Don’t you realize that leaving your omega alone, defenseless and blind in God knows where is dangerous for  him and you? Do you have any sense at all?” Laura screamed.

Derek cringed a little. Yes. He was a strong alpha male. Yes, he was one of the top businessmen and heirs of the Hale shipping fortune, but even at his age, his alpha sister still intimidated him.

“Look, Laura, I can just ask him later. I’ve got a direct line to him right now so it shouldn’t be hard to get to him, or find where he is. I—”

As Derek was speaking, Agent Smith walked into the hotel room.

The Agent looked a little tired, his black suit was not as freshly starched, hair fell down to his nape, un gelled. Derek wanted to ask what was wrong, but then the Agent spoke and his words were fixated in Derek’s mind.

“Someone found an abandoned brown mazda on a side road in Tacuarembó. We need to check if it was Stiles’s car.”

Derek’s eyes widened in anticipation, “Any reports of a young omega nearby?”

The Agent shook his head.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s go” Derek admonished, pulling on sneakers and a stuffing his few belongings into a travel bag.

Laura glowered at him from the back of the room.

“We can discuss it later, Laura” Derek told his sister dismissively. Her lips curled upward slightly, Laura did not like to be dismissed by anyone, especially her little brother.

“We better” Laura muttered.

Derek would live to regret that statement.

* * *

 

During the four hour drive between Montevido and Tacuarembo, Laura would list all sorts of reasons and ways he could have had a more productive conversation with his mate, her mouth moving on and on like the whir of a trapped fly, giving Derek a headache.

Derek knew his sister loved him, really, she did.

Just not right now.

It was midafternoon when they got to Tacuarembo. It was a quiet city filled with well paved asphalt roads, green trees and an open cobalt blue sky. “Cuidad de Tacuarembó” a sign beckoned. A beautiful bridge made up of pink, blue and yellow supports greeted them, and a few cars cruised along on roads. Pedestrians strolled along on white concrete sidewalks, bicycle wheels spun along, the steel spokes illuminated only by the midday sun. It was the kind of place where a man could retire in peace, spend the rest of his life sitting on his front porch, drinking ice tea, free from the chaotic world.

On a simple side street, Derek saw the brown mazda.

His first thought was _“is this even road safe?”_ His mate had pretty expensive taste, he couldn’t believe Stiles would chose to drive such a beaten down car. There were a few dents in the rear, it was an old car, 1990s maybe? Paint was peeling off from a few scratches at the sides and one windshield wiper was missing. When Derek tried to start the car, it sounded like an old man wheezing as his lungs were stimulated by a ventilator. Yet, just sitting in the car, Derek could smell the unmistakable scent of Stiles.  Stiles smelled like instant coffee, frayed electric chords, and burnt blood, Derek thought. He tried to use English to describe the scent, but he couldn’t. All he knew was that the car reeked of Stiles’s depression, his terror, pain, exhaustion and anguish. Underneath all of those scents lay the distant thrum of resignation. As if Stiles had accepted that he would never make it, that he was meant to die.

Derek’s stomach twisted up in knots, his omega was vulnerable and, if his nose was right, very very ill. 

Laura stood outside the OCS limo and squinted at Derek, hazel eyes avoiding the harsh noonday sun.

Derek had never been one of those alphas who relished beating or raping omegas. In his school days, and on business trips, he may have used an omega mouth once or twice but he had never wanted to hurt omegas for their own sake. Derek was secure enough in his own identity that he never felt the need to dominate omegas to make himself feel better. Omegas were just there. Like furniture, or maids, providing a sexual service when it was needed.

Meeting Stiles had made him think differently, for the first time he was looking into the underbelly of society’s treatment of omegas and realizing how much the monster lives within us.

And Derek had decided he wanted Stiles to have some freedoms, he really did. Stiles could work, perhaps for his family company. He wouldn’t stop Stiles from eating, sleeping, doing what he wanted in anyway. Derek didn’t really want to browbeat his mate into submission.

The thing was, Derek was worried. His omega was putting himself in increasing danger. Staying with Felix was probably okay, and the hotel in Montevido was reputable. However, the mazda he was looking at probably ought to be blown up and sold to a scrap heap, he couldn’t even imagine his mate driving it. Taking the bond blockers was a horrible idea and running away while he was sick and blind was just—what was Stiles thinking?

So Derek felt he needed to take action. Because perhaps Stiles didn’t want an alpha, but he _needed_ one right now. And Derek was not a man to avoid protecting his mate.

* * *

 

**Stiles**

Stiles had woken up feeling better, his aches and pains had lightened, his body felt limber, even the darkness around him seemed to be getting lighter. And that made him happy. He chuckled to himself, long time ago getting another million dollar bonus made him happy, and now, just the feeling of his limbs moving, the hope he would not be blind forever brought him joy. How the mighty have fallen.

Oh well.

But just as soon as he was fully awake and trying (to no avail) to find his pants in darkness, all the events of last night came back to him and Stiles was filled with self-loathing.

Had he really acted like a stupid stereotypical omega? He saw himself, relaxing into his—no, not his, never his—alpha’s scent and remembered the cloying calm he had felt with deepening horror.

 As he struggled to block the image, and shield himself from the shame, Mildred’s voice came back. Every once in a while Stiles would hear from “Mildred”,( the name he gave to his omega instincts). She’d talk as if she was an actual honest to god person standing right next to him. She had appeared not long after his first heat, as he was learning how to pass, how to repress even the smallest shudders of omega instinct.

She popped up at random times and Stiles had no idea how to make her go away.

But he wished she would die a painful death.

Sometimes she was just a sibilant voice, whispering in his head. At other times, it felt like someone outside of him was yelling the words. And at times, if it was really bad, he could almost make out her shadowy outlines in the air next to him.

Stiles had never spoken to anyone about her because well, trying to get help would be outing himself as an omega and hell if he was about to do that.

Getting help would also require him to accept that he was a little crazy and, yeah, that was never going to happen.

“It would be so easy,” she suggested, “to just, give in. Go back to your alpha, let him take care of you. Never be dirty or cold or sick again.”

Stiles snarled.  
The voice pressed on, regardless of Stiles’s disdain.

“Who do you think you are Stiles? You’re not an alpha, just an omega. You might be able to escape from a poorer alpha with less connections, but Derek Hale? He’ll never let you go. All those conquests, all that power you valued, the accolades you won, none of it matters if you don’t have someone to come home to at night. Do you really think you can survive bond separation, Stiles? Let me tell you right now: You can’t. You need to become a good omega, like one of those omegas on television, the ones who cook dinner for their alpha and take his knot like a good little thing every night. You wouldn’t have to run anymore Stiles, you wouldn’t even have to think. Just lie back and let Derek take care of you.” The voice hummed.

Stiles pressed his hands to his ears. “No Mildred. NO NO”

Stiles closed his eyes, “You’re wrong Mildred. I want to get to Paraguay, I want to have hopes and dreams. I will not be just another fucking slut hanging off a goddamn alpha knot. And most of all Mildred, I am NOT omega. So shut up!!!” Stiles screamed.

The yelling brought Charon to his room.

“What are you yelling about?” the man asked.

Stiles felt the distinct burn of shame spread across his cheeks, “nothing Charon”, Stiles replied.

“Well,” Charon stated in a skeptical tone, “you need to pack up and get dressed soon, we’re going to be on our way. I left your clothes on the bed, shirt closest to you, the underwear and pants following the shirt. Your bag is on the floor, next to the bed’s left post and none of your things have been touched. We leave in 15 minutes prior to 15 minutes prior. Okay?” Charon asked in a tone that made it clear it was not really a question.

Stiles took a few moments to put himself together.

“Ok.”

* * *

 

Stiles was cramped in some small compartment, he thought, in the back of some truck. He hoped to God that Charon was really who he said he was because if not, Stiles was royally screwed. Being with Derek was probably better than being sold into slavery.

But then again if he was sold into slavery at least he’d get away from Charon’s goddamn lectures.

Charon was something of a radicalist.  Stiles had simply asked, a small, an innocent, a normal question, “So why did you choose the nickname Charon?” Any normal person would have given a 3 to 5 sentence answer with some inane explanation.

Acceptable Answers include:

a)      Well, I just like the name.

b)      I’m really into Greek mythology.

c)      The symbolism is really interesting.

d)     Someone called me that and it stuck.

But Charon? He had to treat Stiles to a fucking 10 minute spiel on how the modern world was like death and he was like Charon , but instead of bringing men and women to the underworld, he brought them back into the light bla bla bla, omegas should have rights, bla bla bla.

Finally Stiles couldn’t stand it anymore. He’d never been much of a debater, but he couldn’t take another hour of Charon’s rambling.

“Do you really think every omega should have rights?” Stiles asked, “I mean some omegas _are_ better than others. I mean I had an omega I used for oral service that was as dull as a doornail, what would he do with constitutional rights? He certainly wasn’t qualified to hold a job,”

Charon was finally silent for a few seconds.

“Stiles, do you believe omegas are human beings?”

“What kind of dumb question is that, of course I do.” Stiles replied.

“And do you believe all human beings are entitled to basic rights?”

“Well, mostly. But we have some cases in which humans are not given all their rights, like children and mentally disabled people…” Stiles countered.

“So you believe that all omegas are basically at the same level as 5 year old children, incapable of grasping complex concepts?” Charon queried.

“Not all of them,” Stiles argued, “I meant that some of them are. Alphas are right in that, most omegas by and large aren’t that intelligent. You don’t see any omegas creating brilliant inventions or running fortune 500 companies.  Omegas have smaller brains than alphas do. It’s science.”

Charon made a clicking sound in his throat, “I see I’ll need to double back with you. How do people become intelligent?”

“It’s an inborn trait” Stiles replied testily.

“Well, if someone is the most intelligent person ever but lives on an island with no access to schools or books or tools, how would we know he was intelligent? Do you really believe no intelligent people existed before the creation of writing or electricity?”

“He’d make his own system of writing”

“Now, you’re just being contrary. Because of course, our mythological man on an island in the middle of the ocean doesn’t know that writing is the most important marker of his intellect. Maybe he’s focused on how to catch enough fish for the day.”

“What are you saying, that intelligence is not genetic?”

“It certainly has a genetic aspect, I think, but genes are what we call in science necessary but not sufficient. Basically genetics are important but don’t really tell the whole story,” Charon explained.

Stiles growled. “So what is the whole story?”

“Hold on,” Charon chuckled, “I’m getting to that”

“Do you think you would be where you are without the education you got?”

“I don’t see how that is relevant”

“Of course. Did other omegas, like the omega you so kindly used as your personal dick sucker, have a chance to get that education?”

Stiles felt a sick feeling rumble up in his stomach.

“Well, if my desk omega was smarter he would have run away or pretended to be an alpha. It’s not my fault that he never thought to do more with his life. I am not responsible for his shitty life choices”

“And you made the choice to change your designation to alpha, right Stiles?”

“No, it happened before I was born but—” Stiles froze, realizing what he had just said.

“So the only crime these other omegas committed was that they didn’t have a father as dedicated and loving as yours who was willing to put everything on the line, so that his son could have a decent shot at life. Is that their fault or a result of their shitty life decisions?” Charon probed.

“No” Stiles whispered quietly.

“But of course the system makes you think that because you’re an omega who managed to pass you are so much better, so much smarter than the others. The truth is nothing separates you from your desk omega except luck, and being born into the right family, Stiles. And nothing separates an alpha from an omega but a few genes regulated a little differently.” Charon concluded.

“Those few genes make all the difference between being having to live a life of secrecy and shame and ruling the world. Those few genes make it okay for an alpha to punch or beat or rape an omega if he wants to. Those genes make omegas docile and stupid and submissive instead of powerful and strong. How can you call it a few little genes when there are so many differences?” Stiles asked in irritation.

“Those things you’ve cited as differences are not genetic, Stiles, they’re societal. Somewhere along the line someone decided that omegas needed to live a life of shame and secrecy that omegas ought to be taught how to cook, and not how to lead. And that alphas were on the top. Society doesn’t just organize itself like that.”

“You’re full of shit,” Stiles retaliated, “biology is like that. Even now, I can feel my stupid omega side calling out for its alpha, trying to tell me that running away is a bad idea”

“Because Omegas and Alphas are two sides of the same coin, a nickel must have both a head and a tail. Without one, 9 cannot become ten. In the old days, omegas were not submissive to alphas, both dynamics complemented each other seamlessly like the way all of your five fingers are unequal but still get the job done”

“You keep talking about these old days that never happened. Omegas were always below alphas even in pre-historic times” Stiles contended.

“So that’s the history they’ve been teaching you nowadays?” Stiles could almost imagine Charon shaking his head.

“That’s a lie, omegas and alphas have always worked together. Who do you think drafted the bill of rights?”

“James Madison,” Stiles replied, he had never missed any history classes.

“It was actually Jeffrey Davies, Madison’s omega. Cleopatra was actually not in love with Marc Anthony by Anthony’s right hand man Alcaeus, who also happened to be an omega. In the old days, omegas and alphas worked together so seamlessly that it was rumored they could speak telepathically. And stronger bonds used to unlock powers in both alphas an omegas, now almost completely lost to the world. That’s the river of lethe right there.” Charon concluded.

“What do you mean, the river of Lethe? That makes no sense.” Stiles griped.

“He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future.”

“What book is that from?” Stiles asked.

“1918, it was destroyed in the great book burning of 1995, you’ve probably never heard of it” Charon stated, almost playfully.

Stiles rolled his eyes, “There was no great book burning in 1995. You’re crazy.”

Charon sighed.

“People in modern society seem to have bathed in the river of Lethe. You all have no past, no future, no idea how to move on from the world of death you’ve found yourself in. Instead of realizing you’re all on fire, you keep striving after money, power, and success. That won’t save you from the scales of Anubis”

Stiles placed a weary hand on his temple, “you’re not making any sense”. His head throbbed, flashes of light blinding him.

Charon’s voice lost some of its fervor, “Sleep, Stiles. We’ll bet at Rivera soon”

* * *

 

Stiles woke up to blinding light.

Then slowly color started to bleed back, then shapes and sounds. Stiles heart bloomed with joy as he began to see the trees, the houses, the sky he’d always taken for granted with his own eyes again.

He’d never take bond blockers again, he promised himself, some risks were just not worth it.

Stiles felt himself smile for the first time in days.

He turned over to see what “Charon” looked like.

He was a brown skinned man with a shock of white hair, face weathered with wrinkles. His mouth had a sharp bent to it, but his brown eyes were warm and kind, felt safe. Stiles placed the man’s scent as a pale shade of alpha.

Stiles’s reverie was broken by Charon’s voice and now he could see that the voice did not match Charon’s visage. Charon looked like a kindly old gentleman, but his voice was booming with command, low pitched and pleasant like the sound of a distant ocean.

“Your sight has come back!” Charon greeted, turning to look at Stiles bundled in the back for a second before shifting his eyes back to the road. “I was hoping it would” he added.

Stiles couldn’t help grinning back.

The truck idled to a stop. Charon turned to Stiles, “Ok, we’re in Rivera right now, I’m going to get my passport stamped so I can cross the border. Be absolutely silent. No one can see or hear you. Here’s a sandwich. I’ve also stocked your bag with some canned soup and other stuff because you’ve got a long journey ahead of you,” Charon explained.

He opened the truck door, pressing one finger to his open mouth, shushing Stiles.

After the car door shut, Stiles waited anxiously. He found his stomach rumbling so he ate the ham, mayo, bacon and cheese sandwich given to him. He tried to close his eyes and sink into a quiet place in his mind.

He heard people rushing outside his door and resisted the urge to peek out the window.

Stiles’s gut instinct said the man was a good guy, he hoped he wasn’t wrong, hoped he wasn’t in the hands of a slaver or someone who wished him harm.

Stiles prayed to whatever greater powers were out there. _Please let me be safe. Please don’t let this be the wrong decision. Please Greater Power. Please Please don’t let anyone find me._

Stiles felt like a sitting duck.

He watched the sun drift downward in the sky like a balloon losing air, and just before Stiles vomited all over himself in the sweltering heat of the metal truck, the door opened and Charon peeked in.

“ Damn, the lines were so long and those bastards were giving me so much shit about some rich omega who reputedly ran away from his alpha and is probably en route to Paraguay or something,”  Charon complained.

Stiles’s heart stopped in his throat.

“I promised them some Brazillian beer and told em I didn’t know nothing bout no suited up omega” Charon finished. He looked back at Stiles and winked.

Stiles was stunned.

“You knew who I was this whole time?” Stiles asked Charon as he put the truck into gear.

Charon waved cheerfully to the “immigration agents” at the border. “Do you think I pick up random omegas without knowing who they are? How do you think our organization would have survived so long?”

Charon stopped at a train station in Santana do Livramiento. It was late at night, as Charon had driven in, Stiles saw the sign “Welcome to Brazil”.

He may have cried a little bit there.

Charon dropped him off, pressing some reals into his head.

Stiles looked up at the man, who had been the kindest alpha he had ever known and molasses clogged the center of his throat. Only one word came out.

“Why?”

“Why what?” Charon asked.

“Why did you help me, feed me, and take care of me when I was sick? You must have known how much risk you were taking by helping a notorious omega like me and yet, you did it anyway.” Stiles asked, confused.

“For two reasons, Stiles.

One. Even though most of the burden of the omega codes falls on omegas, it hurts alphas too. We alphas are robbed of all our futures, all of what we can, and are, and could be. We’re fighting against our natures, in a war with ourselves. We’re given a false place at the top of the ladder as if that makes up for not having real love and connections with our omegas. I want to see the omega codes end, because if things go on as they have, I don’t see a future for alphas either.

Two: Our society thinks we should step on the little guy’s head to reach the highest shelf. We are encouraged to blackmail, scheme and fight our way to the top, regardless of the consequences. But that’s wrong. The path does matter, Stiles. Why did I help you? Because I saw you were sick and needed help. That’s it. There doesn’t need to be any other reason.” Charon finished to complete silence.

Stiles stares at the gauge lines, railroad tracks wrapping around each other in curving lines in the distance, gravel crunching beneath his sneakers and tried not to cry.

It was weird. As Stiles liked to tell himself, he wasn’t the crying sort. But he had been _so sure_ that he was going to die on that road in Tacuarembó. He had been fighting to escape to Paraguay all this time and no alpha, not even Felipe had ever understood him.

And here came this random guy, who didn’t have to help him, who put his life in danger by giving Stiles food and shelter. Who saved Stiles’s vision and most likely his life. For no reason other than because Stiles needed the help.

Stiles is used to stepping on people to get to the top. Theodore had taught him that it was a dog eat dog world out there and Stiles was determined to be one of the top dogs, not the ones who was eaten. He’d known he’d have to be better, smarter, faster and stronger than anyone else. He could never show any weakness. Or mercy. Now, he felt a shift inside him. He didn’t know what it was, not really. But something about what Charon had done made something change in Stiles, something open up, something warm and fuzzy, a flower rose from concrete.

Charon pulled an object out of his backpack. “I have pretty good intuition and something tells me you need this.” He pulled a dog eared book out of his backpack. The cover looked like it had been licked by flames, but Stiles could still see the outline of a few letters on the cover page.

“What is this?” Stiles’s brow furrowed in confusion.

“Fahrenheit 451.Ray Bradbury. A man before his time.” The man stated.

Stiles hugged the book to his chest, “I’ll treasure it forever.”

“And, I need you to do one more thing, a favour, if you will” Charon asked.

He pulled a picture of a young, smiling, brown skinned girl with black hair and the most startling green eyes from the dashboard.  She was holding a black lab, eyes alight with excitement.

“My daughter. If you ever do come across her, or hear of her. Please tell her about me, tell her I love her.”

“I promise I will” Stiles vowed.

Stiles wasn’t the type to give big hugs or gestures of affection. He had known so little of this man, but he felt as if he had known Charon a long time, there was a resonance between them.

He stood next to the old man, their hands barely touching as a cold evening wind ruffled through his hair.

Around them, gauge lines spiraled, different train tracks merged into one like a Y and then split, curving hills and valleys along the ground. Just a few streets back was Rivera, blending almost seamlessly into Santana do Livramento. The people looked no different, feet crossing easily across both borders, language and food travelling as if no division existed. Nothing on the ground or in the sky marked Rivera any different from Santana.

But well, we are told that,

_Good fences make good neighbors._

So we box ourselves, section, partion, divide our beings into the smallest parts so that we can peacefully coexist, drawing arbitrary lines on Earth, speaking strange tones of ownership.

A whisper of these things goes through Stiles’s head as he stands, hand not quite touching the old man. He doesn’t want to hug the old man because to do so would not be masculine, would make him less manly. His breath puffs in the air like a lingering smoke dragon.  He hears the train as if from a far off distance, coming, coming, yellow lights dispelling a beam of light that burns straight through the darkness of the night.

Stiles squares his shoulders as the train stops in front of him. Charon hands Stiles a ticket as the train sputters to a stop.

Stiles finds a seat on the bus near the window. From here he can see outside, he can see Charon’s figure become smaller and smaller in the background, narrowing to a line until Stiles can no longer see him.

Stiles holds the Fahrenheit 451 book to his chest, and tries to hold onto the pale scent, he hugs the book close to him with everything he’s got.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the themes I'm really enjoying is looking at Stiles's fall in social class. Money, up to a certain point, can shield you from injustices around you. And Stiles has never really had to feel the full weight of being an omega, because he's been rich and powerful. But he won't be ignorant for long.


	10. Anubis of the Scales

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Stiles's heart is weighed against the truth and the outcome is perhaps not that great.
> 
> Best Lines:

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooooo.  
> This is a very intense long emotional chapter. We have a lot of flashbacks to Theodore. and lots of craziness.  
>  **Warnings**  
>  _Oral Rape. Dubiously consensual sex. disassociation due to trauma. general awfulness_  
>  Note: I've also marked the rape scenes so people can read around it.

**Stiles:**

Stiles watched the landscape go by as the sun slowly rose above the horizon. He tracked it’s slow pace across the sky, his arm tightened across his backpack as if it was an amulet against the problems of the world. Alphas and betas and omegas huddled near him, the refuse of the world, dirty clothes packed with dust, teeth missing, the car stunk of unwashed bodies. And desperation, each eye gleaming with the desire to leave the poverty stricken countryside, buoyed by the hope of a new life in the cities. These people, so much like the multitudinous waves of the world crashed would crash upon the city’s shores, time after time, eon after eon, the dreams of the peasants never die. Stiles was neither an expert nor a person that admittedly gave much of a damn about Marxist theory. Class struggle was something that for other people to worry about. He had gotten where he had gotten through sheer grit and hard work, not starry-eyed idealism, not waiting for a handout.

_Or so he’d thought._

But now, in the light of the day, thumbing through the pages of the book Charon had left for him, Stiles felt the creeping suspicion that truly there was nothing much different between him and the omega with a swollen eye across from him, holding a squalling child, huddled into the mass of his alpha. With a creeping awfulness, Stiles realized that even with all his plans, dreams, beliefs, ideals, admitted intelligence, the truth was, he had just been lucky.

Outside his window,the fields that sloped up to rolling hills, blades of grass, each its own ensiform shape quivered slightly from an unseen wind, and the earth that continued to roil with molten iron 4,000 miles beneath his feet, unheeding the antics of the silly humans above ground.

Stiles worried. He was hurtling away from Uruguay onto the most dangerous leg of his journey, once again, without a plan in mind. He unzipped his backpack and couldn’t help a smile from crossing his face as he noticed the turkey bacon lettuce and tomato sandwich Charon had packed for him. He unwrapped his lunch and happily took a bite out of the bread, tasting the sharpness of the Monterey cheese, the freshness of the turkey, after such hunger and weariness, just the taste of the food cheered him.

_It’s_ _funny,_ Stiles thought.

_I used to live in a million dollar penthouse, with a maid who cleaned my room, beautiful suits and 500 dollar shoes. Yet despite all that luxury, I have never been as happy as I am now._

Stiles swallowed the bite, lifting up his brown eyes to the sun he’d thought he might never see again and took a minute to relish just the perfection of this moment. Planning could wait. The world would still be there in a few minutes.

**Derek:**

When we next see Derek, he is sitting on a white carpet in the floor of his room, trying to connect with his omega. It was weird and difficult, trying to bondspeak. Some omega alpha pairs never seemed to be able to do so successfully. Trying to bondspeak with his omega was like trying to remember the code for a lock you’ve long forgotten, when that code consisted of fourteen random letters and or numbers. Suffice it to say that Derek was not having a good time. Not even close.

Derek’s head is pounding as he tries to reach out his soul over neural connections, forms of chemical signaling and link up but all he hears is the static buzz of a psychic telephone. What a psychic headache.

Derek wants to know where Stiles is. And now, it’s not just about some cute mate chase between them, because honestly while Derek had been a bit upset with Stiles’s frantic efforts to escape capture, running after Stiles was also kind of, well, fun. It was intriguing wondering where Stiles was going to go next. He enjoyed matching wills with his omega. Hell, the alpha part of him even slightly felt like this was like a mating dance, a chance to preen and display himself. But like Mozart’s 40th Symphony, things were taking a dark turn. He didn’t know whether Stiles had been kidnapped or killed or in the hands of omega traffickers. The worry settled in his tomach like a hot stone. It was not a good feeling.

Laura had returned to the Hale New York City Headquarters already. Whether Stiles was found or not, they had a business empire to run, other companies to pound down to the ground, monopolies to create. The world around Derek did not stop for one fascinating omega, even though Derek wanted it to. He had driven Laura to the airport just this morning, the rented car unsteady in his grip, Uruguay’s green hills receding in the distance. Laura had swept her brown hair into a perfectly restrained updo and fixed her little brother with piercing hazel eyes before she boarded the private jet.

“Derek, I had hoped to avoid this; but you really need to do everything you can to make sure you find him. No alpha has every survived a bond breaking at such a late stage. If you need money, military men, anything, you have it. Just,” Laura struggled to speak for an uncharacteristic moment. And in that second she looked so much like the young woman she was at 23, when she had come home from college to see her family house burned in flames around her, with only a younger brother and a half insane uncle to hang on to. Then like a shutter, the window of vulnerability closed.

“Try not to fuck up to much,” Laura finished. She gripped her suitcase in one hand, black heels peeking out from the bottoms of her Philip Lim trousers, and climbed up the stairs, never turning back.

Derek was worried about himself too. Yes, the game he was playing with Stiles could be fun, but it had an ending point. He was slowly entering the last stages of the acute phase. He could feel his hold on Stiles weakening, and he knew the terminal phase was fast approaching.

2 months.

That was all the time he would have from the beginning of the terminal phase to the end of his life. He had no idea how it would go. As he drove back to the hotel from the airport, he mused that the lack of knowledge was honestly perhaps the worst thing about it. Generally humans never liked to think about their own death. Death is not a thing that happens to us, it is something we see happen to others, it is an unfortunate day for some poor kid in a third world country who happened to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time as the bomb exploded. But us? Well we’re going to live forever. Living in the midst of a death sentence was almost like staring into the barrel of a Glock and hoping there was no bullet down the end of that long dark chamber.

And then Derek wouldn’t let himself think about it anymore, because morbid thoughts weren’t helping… anyone?

Mostly, Derek was just hoping that Stiles was alive. He thought he would feel it if Stiles had died, but with all the weird things that were happening with the bond; for example, like the bond blockers Stiles had used, he worried the bond was so damaged he might not even feel Stiles’s death.

And yes, he didn’t want Stiles to die, partially for selfish reasons. After all, who wants to die?

Do you?

But also because in that one moment, when he felt Stiles purr over the bond, Derek caught a glimpse of what it might be like to have Stiles willingly with him, and in love. Because during this chase he had learned that his bond mate was by turns brilliant, passionate, funny, and precious. He had learned more about his mate’s life than most alphas learn about their prospective omegas and something about Stiles just resonated with him, like a lock and a key. Stiles was just _right._ Right for him. And Derek would be there for him, be what he needed, Derek could try to change for him…. Maybe.

Derek gathered his knees together. The Agent and his cronies were soliciting tips about a young bruised omega male, taken away by an alpha. Stiles’s pictured was circulated on the Uruguyan news and announcements were placed on the radio. With no luck, no one had seen Stiles. It was possible Stiles wasn’t even in Uruguay anymore.

Derek was disconsolate.

It was the third day he had spent in meditation, trying to reach out for Stiles in the bond. But he couldn’t seem to link up. His heart hurt.

Derek drew up his legs to himself and placed his head on the top of his knees. He was so worried about Stiles, where was he? Was he going to be okay? Who was with him? Derek just wanted some hope, some feather of proof that his mate was alive.

He felt the sadness overflow, allowing himself to feel the pain in a way he has not since he was a young child.

It’s fills him with a painful echo, covering his world in a blue shadow, it reaches through the bond playing mournful notes of the saddest little song.

And Derek just lets himself be sad, he rests his cheek on his knee, he closes his eyes, eyelashes touching his cheek. He lets himself _hurt_ like he hasn’t had any right to since he was a young fourteen year old kid who had just lost almost everything he loved.

In the midst of the sorrow, he feels something trying to break through. It feels like a dog lapping at his cheek, it’s a warm presence that just sits beside him, just being there.

Derek tries to reach out, 

“ _Stiles?”_

The warm presence reveals itself and he can feel even before he hears the voice, Stiles’s presence, his existence, his aliveness. Stiles’s mental fingerprint feels better, more smooth and solid.

_“What is it, Derek?”_ Stiles asks grumpily. DDerek feels Stiles’s presence slipping out.

Derek can’t stand it. Feeling his mate come just to abandon him again.

_“Stiles, no. Don’t go”_ Derek instinctively barks out an alpha command.

Stiles freezes, not able to mentally disconnect.

_“I knew this was a mistake. I just felt you and I felt you so sad and… why did I let myself be swayed by my feelings? Caught. Again. Checkmate Alpha. Look, just tell me what you want.”_ Stiles demands in anger.

Stiles’s anger brings out a flare of fury from Derek.

_“What do you mean: What do I want from you? No matter how much you try to deny it, you’re my mate. I am staking my life on you. We’re both going to die if we don’t complete this Stiles. Please listen to me”_

Stiles is all angles and cold fury, “ _You mean you’re going to die. 80% of omegas survive broken bonds Derek. I’ll be all right. Don’t act like any of this, any of this nonsense at all was for me and not about your needs, your wants your selfish desires”_

Derek felt his rage flare, “ _Right. I’m the one basing my chance of survival on an old, little quoted study from the 1950s! I’m the taking bond blockers which have been known to destroy bonds and drive both partners mad. I’m the one who ran off, who has to be chased through 2? Is it 3 continents? You act like a childish wayward omega.  You made stupid decisions and expose yourself to unnecessary risks and I’m being called selfish?”_

Stiles sent a huff of exasperation through the bond, “ _You’ll never understand it Derek. You can’t. What do **alphas** know about omega problems? Nothing. Just let me go. I’m finished with this conversation”_

Derek felt a sick feeling twist in his chest. He hated what he was about to do.  He layered his voice with alpha tone, unleashing the full force of his command on Stiles, his nearly mated omega.

_“Stiles, I command you to tell me where you are and where you plan to go. Immediately”_

The full force of the alpha command hit Stiles like a freight train. Except this time, he had no reserves to fight Derek off. Yes, he was feeling better, but he had only just gotten over his illness a couple of days ago. And back in Montevido, Derek hadn’t let all his alpha power be felt as he did now. Even worse, the weaker he was the more the omega came to the surface. And the omega was desperate to please his alpha.

Stiles struggled against the command for a full 2 minutes, ducking behind a trash covered alley in Porto Alegre. His brain felt like it was dripping out of his ears, Mildred begged for her alpha. And Stiles felt the sticky taste of blood streaming down his nose. He tried once more, fighting a command was like thumb wrestling. He desperately trying to muster the inner strength to best Derek’s grip, but Stiles was not an alpha. He could not win.

Derek was shocked by the sudden flip in Stiles’s demeanor.

“ _Sorry, alpha. Stiles is being bad, so bad. He’s in Porto Alegre in Brazil. Please come find us alpha. We are being a bad omega and need to be good. So good for you. Need to be claimed. Already wet for you. Haven’t been able to get off, can only think about you inside us, making us whole. Oh Alpha please”_

In the midst of the begging, Stiles began to smell sweet, the kind of sweetness that called to an alpha like scent called a bee.

Derek got a very clear image of Stiles on his knees in an alley, sweet staining his almost perfect skin, mouth shiny with spit. Stiles rocked one long finger inside his mouth, hollowing his cheeks, fellating the finger as if it was a cock.

Derek was concerned.

“ _Stiles are you okay? Snap out of it”_

Derek got another image of Stiles ripping his jeans apart, pressing a finger to the clear colored slick slowly leaking out of his ass, scooping the slick and slurping it as if he was a starving man.

Derek couldn't help but feel his cock grow large at this picture.

His penis hung heavy in his slacks and he couldn't resist the itch of arousal that sparked through him.

_“See alpha”_ Stiles’s eyes were a testament to his omega fugue, brown pupils blown so wide with desire, he seemed like he was high. “ _I want you so bad. Please”_

Derek wrapped his hand around his dick, unable to stop himself from jerking to eh idea of the desperate omega before him, the picture Stiles made, butt naked, shuddering, and trying to use his fingers to open his hole for his alpha. Such a slut for Derek. Beautiful dick sucking lips made to be wrapped around Derek’s cock, reddened and dripping with spit. This was exactly how an omega should be. Sweet and submissive and all the things that Stiles was—

The scent becomes more sickly than sweet, the blank eyes begin to seem less dopey and more manic. It’s kind of uncanny.

Derek lets go of his cock.

 “ _Stiles, snap out of it. Stiles. Come back to me”_

He isn't exactly sure what happened, but Stiles’s eyes roll back in his head and the vision Derek has gotten of Stiles breaks.

 

** Stiles **

When Stiles comes to he is butt naked, standing in an alleyway of Porte Alegre. His jeans have ended somewhere on the trash strewn floor, his leg is wet with slick. He smells horrifyingly of an omega in heat, even to his own senses.   
Shit, he thinks, this is not going to be a good day.

Stiles hasn’t taken his suppressants ever since the whole “going blind” thing because that was pretty traumatic, you know, and  he was busy trying to kind of stay alive and not really thinking about his possible heat. To be honest, his heat wasn’t even due, really. But then the alpha had to contact him. Stiles had been fine until he tried to resist the alpha command. Angered, his omega side surged up full force, bringing his heat with it, trying to entice the forgiveness of his alpha. He could smell dried blood on his upper lip, a headache coming to the fore as he desperately tried to put his pants on. This was not looking good.

He had come to Porte Alegre to find Anubis. The more he looked at the Farenheit 451 book, the more he realized that the book was a code. Charon had highlighted the letters “Find Anubis” on the seventh page. And Stiles could only guess that Anubis was a fellow omega smuggler. Where else would a smuggler be than Porte Alegre—the happy port?

Stiles had asked around in the typical way, finding the poor beggars on the streets and slipping them a few bucks here and there. He had gotten so close to the apartment where Anubis was rumored to be hiding until the stupid alpha—Derek –ruined everything. Stiles had felt Derek’s sadness, the burn of his mate’s all encompassing pain and it hurt so much he was stopped in his tracks. Stiles couldn’t help reaching out to connect to Derek, worrying that he was not allright.

And of course that was how Stiles went from being 5 days from freedom, to standing naked in an alleyway in the full flush of heat.

He hated Derek.

So much.

Stiles tries to think of the best answer to his problems now. He could and should take another point of entry into Paraguay.  He could go through Argentina and slip from there into Paraguay.

But the Argentinian route was dangerous, way laid by different omega smugglers, winding deep into the heart of gang territory and across dense forests where no human feet had trod for a hundred years.

In an epic story, Stiles would be our reluctant hero, choosing the path less traveled by, venturing into unknown reaches, unafraid of jaguars, gangsters or smugglers.

Fuck that.

This isn’t an epic Disney fairy tale.

This is Stiles’s life goddamn it. And being caught by Derek is slightly preferable to being eaten by a hungry jaguar or being raped by random men over and over.

Only Slightly.

Stiles figured he’d wing it as he went. For now, his first and foremost problem was his heat. As Stiles tried to think “dry thoughts”, hoping the slick from his hole would stop gushing, his mind traveled back to freshman year of high school, the first time he’d ever had a real heat.

* * *

 

First his scent changed. Stiles didn’t notice, but suddenly he went from smelling normal, boring as bland as unsweetened yogurt into a veritable pheromone feast. Other students in the halls would linger in his presence, smile at the freshman more, even his roommate was less apt to hog the tv set they had in their room. Then the shakes came. Stiles felt slightly off, his head ran hot then cold. He debated going to the nurse to ask for a sickday but he didn’t want to get far behind in Exeter’s infamously difficult classes. Headaches appeared in week three, first starting small like the rain pattering on his brain and then the pain escalated into pounding migraines that left the world fuzzy, left light blurring around the edges.

And Stiles didn’t know what it was. He went to the school nurse’s office and got Tylenol. He swallowed aspirins as if they were tic tacs.

The Friday before his AP World History exam, Stiles lay on his bed, racked with pain and unable to move. It felt like knives were tearing his insides apart, as if a pack of dingos were using his stomach as a chew toy.

Or in other words, he hurt.

Stiles couldn’t speak, couldn’t cry, he just lay on his bed and thought he would die. He wanted to call his father, but their health insurance was terrible, and the copay would bankrupt his dad. He kept praying that he would feel better.

A knock.

Stiles couldn’t even find the strength to reply or answer.

“Stiles? I noticed you weren’t in class today and wanted to make sure…” Theodore’s voice trailed when he noticed Stiles curled up in fetal position on his thin bred spread, every breath an agony.

“Oh shit” Theodore whispered.

Stiles barely registered Theodore’s words before his eyes rolled up in his head and he was lost to the world.

Stiles woke up in an unfamiliar bed. It was disconcerting. He tried to place where he might be and why he was sleeping one someone else’s bed, but his mind seemed to hold few answers.

Stiles managed to sit up with great pain. It was then he realized he was wearing nothing but boxer shorts and his legs were wet with some weird white filmy substance.

_“Ok,”_ Stiles thought to himself, “ _I am half naked in a random person’s bed, covered with a whitish filmy liquid. There is nothing wrong with this situation. It is under control”_

As Stiles worked hard to deny the reality of where he was, the door opened.

Theodore walked in. Blonde hair just the right amount of tussled. Angelic blue eyes. Cupid bow grin.

_“How did I go from dying in agony to lying naked in Theodore’s bed?”_ Stiles tried to imagine the answer to this question as a logical proof, but he couldn’t figure it out. Something was missing.

On the other hand, Stiles felt fine. No migraine. No headache. Better than ever, in fact.

Theodore simply stood and looked at Stiles, thumbs tucked into his distressed Levi jeans.

“I see you’re awake,” Theodore noted wryly.

Stiles stared, still trying to calculate things in his head.

“You’re probably wondering why you’re half naked in my bed?” Theodore grinned.

“No,” deadpanned Stiles, “I’m trying to figure out how to build a Dyson Sphere so I can harness the energy of Alpha Centauri”

“You’re so cruel. You know I’m failing introductory physics” Theodore chuckled.

It was the chuckle, the tiny tinkle of laughter that turned Stiles’s discombobulated thoughts into rage.

“Really, Theodore? Of course I fucking want to know what happened. Where the fuck am I?”

Theodore’s face changed from the mask of joking amusement he showed to others. Suddenly Stiles was hit full force by the intensity of Theodore’s pity.

“You really don’t know, do you Stiles?”

“What the fuck am I supposed to know about? Am I a secret Jedi Master or something?”

Theodore shook his head. “I wish. No, it’s something probably more banal and equally as terrifying. You’re an omega”

Stiles saw red.

“You fucking liar” he ground out from between gritted teeth and he felt so much anger it was almost like he had blacked out. When he came to, he had pinned Theodore against the wall and had his hands wrapped around the other boy’s throat, compressing his cardiac arteries. Theodore was gasping for air, his face turning a not so flattering shade of purple.

Theodore was striking Stiles’s chest with a heavy hand. And that repetitive motion drew Stiles back into himself. Slowly, Stiles unwound his hands from the other boy’s throat and stared at his palms, the harsh definition of his life and head lines.

There was silence in the room for a moment, broken only by Theodore’s dull raspy breathing.

Then, one corner of Theodore’s mouth quirked upwards in a kind of quarter smile.

“Do you always try to strangle people who tell you the truth?”

Stiles responded slowly, his voice distant. “It’s not the truth, Theodore. You drugged me and kidnapped me. You need to take me back to school.”

Theodore shook his head and then sat next to Stiles on the bed. The bed comforter was a cheerful yellow. Somehow, the color seemed so wrong for the discussion both boys were having now. Years later. Stiles would always hate that exact color of pale yellow. Just seeing the shade would cause acid to rise in his stomach.

“Tell me how you ended up in such a bad state on Tuesday” Theodore said gently.

Stiles swallowed, “I was having shakes, migraines, an off and on fever. And then one morning I woke up and felt like my stomach was being ripped apart by wolves. How did you even get in?”

“You left the door open,” Theodore explained, “you were lucky it was me”

Stiles continued, “I don’t understand how all this adds up to being an omega”

Theodore tried to be kind, “It’s a textbook case, Stiles. Shakes. Migraines. Pains. All the hallmarks of an omega entering their first heat. Welcome to omega puberty. Did no one teach you anything?”

Stiles shook his head unbelievingly, “That can’t be it. The mark on my birth certificate says alpha. I’ve never been sweet or submissive or felt any urge to cook or make kids at all. That cannot be true”

Theodore pulled out an I-phone from his pocket and started tapping away into the search engine.

“How do I know if I’m in

And the results came up: How do I know if I’m in love. How do I know if I’m in labor, in menopause, in heat.

With a tap of his finger, Theodore pressed on “in heat”.

And up came the dispassionate article from Medline.

“When an omega enters his or her first heat, he or she will fell incredible pain, sweats, chills, and possibly headaches. His or her scent will change marking the first…”

And to Stiles the words blurred on the screen.

Stiles spoke calmly. Too calmly. “ I. don’t. Understand”

Theodore said, “What’s there to be confused by? You’re an omega. Congratulations. Salutations. Welcome to the club”

Stiles rummaged through his mind to think of another better option.

“I could also have belladonna poisoning”

Theodore was exasperated. “Really darling? How likely is it that you were given an oral dose of one of the most deadly poisons on earth, happened to only experience migraines and not dilated pupils or hallucinations and woke up the next day with little to no pain? And who would poison you? I mean, it’s not like you’re important enough to have that many enemies.”

“How likely is it that I have been a secret omega and never knew it all this time? My dad’s a police officer for christsakes. He’s supposed to enforce omega codes and make sure omegas go to their alphas. He would never have lied on my birth certificate. You have to be wrong.”

“Occam’s razor” Theodore said calmly.

Stiles shook his head, “The simplest answer must be true. But you’re answer isn’t simple. It’s crazy. Don’t you think I would have known I was an omega by now?”

“Most omegas don’t manifest until 14, Stiles” Theodore remarked reasonably.

“Shut up!” Stiles screamed.

A beat of silence thrummed between them again.

“Take me home Theodore.” Stiles stated.

Theodore looked uncomfortable.

“I don’t think that’s really a good—“

In a flash, Stiles grabbed Theodore’s phone from his hand. “TAKE ME HOME NOW.!

Or I’ll call the police and have you arrested for kidnapping”

Theodore’s face blanched pure white.

“Calm down, Stiles. Step away from the phone” Theodore raised both hands up as if he was trying to placate an angry dog.

“9” Stiles dialed.

“You’re fucking crazy, do you know that?”

“1”

“Ok, fine” Theodore relented, “I’ll call my family’s driver to take you back to school. You’ve missed three days of class”

“Three DAYS?” Stiles hyperventilated.

“It’s ok, I got it covered. I got you fake absence notes and everything. I threw your clothes in the washer because they were covered in vomit. They’re probably done by now”

Theodore scrambled out of the door and returned with Stiles’s sweatpants and T-shirt.

 “Here ya go,” Theodore dumped the clothes on the bed.

Stiles got into the clothes as quickly as he could, taking pleasure from being covered, from feeling in control again. He would get down to the bottom of this strange sickness.

Theodore and Stiles did not speak again as both got into a black limo and the car pulled up at the school. Before Stiles could exit the limo, Theodore pulled the freshman back with a light tough on his arm.

“What do you want, you fucker?” Stiles cursed out.

Theodore had a sour look on his face. “Look, going out there as an omega is probably not a good idea. It’s not safe,” he handed Stiles a small spray bottle and a brown plastic pill bottle. “This is beta spray, so you smell like a beta. And these are for your heats, they’re suppressants. Take one every single day, without fail. Ok?”

“You’re crazy” Stiles blurted out.

“Just humor me, please”

Stiles lived to regret not listening to Theodore’s advice. As soon as he got home he flushed the pills down the toilet and threw the spray in the trash.

His roommates, Dane and Grayson, were happy to see him back. Stiles accepted the requisite bro handshakes and hugs.

“Where’d you go man?” Dane asked.

“Ehh, Apparently I caught the flu. Had to rest up for a couple of days” Stiles lied nonchalantly.

“Yo, but word on the street is that you left with Theodore” Grayson chipped in.

Stiles shrugged. “Guy is apparently crazy in love with me, who knew?”

And then his roommates wanted to hear all about how Theodore was in bed. Stiles explained he’d made Theodore suck his dick but was too sick for anything else and then he’d made up the other details by trying to recall all the porn he’d ever watched. He knew that the juicy gossip of a Stiles fucking Exeter’s self-styled lothario would be enough to keep the students from picking apart his story.

Sometimes an artful lie is better than the truth. Some important dude said that once, right?

And the rumors swirled around Stiles for a few weeks. He was, weirdly popular for a hot minute. Theodore didn’t say anything to contradict Stiles’s version of events and re-directed any questions about the three days he and Stiles had spent together with a mysterious smirk and allusive references to Stiles’s cock.

For his part, Stiles was quiet. He got re-takes of his exams from his teachers because he was always such a good student. He sat in the front of the class. He studied. Did homework. Masturbated whenever his roommates were out. He didn’t think about the beta scent he had thrown in the trash. Didn’t wake up to a bed filled with slick after some wicked dream about his alpha math teacher. Didn’t find it harder and harder to fight with his roommates requests. Didn’t notice his scent changing to something sugary sweet. Didn’t feel like he was losing control over his life in every way possible, that his world was a car wreck and he was just seeing it happen in reverse, the ending pre-determined, corpses scattered over the ground.

Nope. Stiles had his shit together and he was fine.

Stiles thought if he said it enough he would be better. He would make it through the last few months of freshman year. Graduate top of his class like he was meant to.

Stiles knew that words had a special power, almost like a magic in themselves. It was not the magician’s sleight of hand that brought the rabbit out of the hat, but the word “Alakazoo”

Fine. Fine. Fine.

Stiles often tried to call his father, in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t figure out what was happening to him. Tried to dial those numbers he had known since he was a child, make his fingers touch the keypads, his voice form the words, “ _Daddy, I think I’m an omega. And I’m scared and I don’t know what is happening to me”._ He wanted his dad to hold him like he had when Stiles was afraid of thunderstorms as a child. He wanted his dad to enfold him in those large arms of his and make the world go away.

 

Stiles wasn’t sleeping. Wasn’t eating. Couldn’t even comprehend what it might mean if he was an omega. What it could mean that slick? Coming from his hole.

 

If he was an omega, he couldn’t be at Exeter. Couldn’t fulfill his dreams of being a great mathematician like Benoit Mandelbrot ( who discovered fractals). In fact his father could go to jail for even educating him at all.

 

Fine. Fine. Fine.

 

He could see the whole wide world that had seemed to stretch from sea to sea close up on him, tightening to a pinhole, a keyhole which he could barely see anything through. He was only fourteen but he would have to give up learning about ancient history to learning about how to change diapers, make meals, use the proper cleaning products. Be a good omega for his alpha.

Fine. Fine.

He couldn’t breathe anymore. It felt like every second was a slow suffocation. Like he was never getting enough air.

**( Rape scene below)**

* * *

 

Dane stood behind Stiles as Stiles was trying to focus on his math homework one day. He rubbed his nose against Stiles’s hair. “You smell so good lately, Stiles. What cologne are you using?”

Stiles felt his hummingbird heart thrum in his throat.

“N-nothing Dane. I’m just me, Stiles, same as ever” Stiles stuttered.

Dane continued to sniff Stiles’s neck.

“There’s something different about you. I can’t put my finger on it, but you smell so good. Just like an –”

“Let’s not get silly here, Dane” Stiles placated.

“Like an omega. That explains it. The slick has been driving me mad. The sweetness. The way you haven’t minded getting me coffee or water whenever I wanted it. Well, I never…” Dane trailed off.

Stiles felt himself slide into panic, “I’m really not an omega Dane. I just. I’m going through something weird. Something hormonal. I think Theodore did it to me.”

Dane’s eyes were hard and cold with lust.

“You’re adorable. As if I wouldn’t know an omega scent anywhere. On your knees omega”

Stiles felt himself slide to the floor, tears prickling his eyes. Felt himself struggle against the alpha command but find himself unable to resist it. Stiles closed his eyes.

Dane pulled out his cock.

It was not a bad looking cock, maybe 6 inches flaccid, and at any other time Stiles would never feel the trepidation he felt now.

For nights after, the sound of that zipper being pulled inch by inch would haunt his memory.  That disgusting crick crick. Stiles hated zippers.

“Suck it, slut. Or I’ll let everyone in the school know we have an omega on campus” Dane threatened.

Stiles swallowed the bile in his throat. _No one can know._ He opened his mouth, and tried to fit the dick inside it.

Dane used Stiles like a prop.

He shoved in and out, not giving Stiles a chance to gasp air or even a chance to breathe. Mechanical pistoned in and out of Stiles’s mouth. And Stiles could taste it. The disgusting unwashed smell of sweat and balls, like rancid butter gone bad, like salty spit. It was all over his mouth, inside of him. He’d never be clean again.

“Take me deep, you filthy slut” Dane groaned. He shoved his cock deep into Stiles’s throat, so deep, it hurt, it bruised him, deep than anything had ever been, like he was hollowing Stiles out, moving things around to make a place for himself. Stiles retched.

Dane growled. “You’re retching? Come on you cum whore, I know what you omegas are like, constantly crazy for alpha cock. Don’t tell me you haven’t been drinking cum since you were old enough to walk, right? I bet you crave it every single moment of every day. You even snuck into boarding school because you were so desperate to get alpha cock, hmm?”

Stiles felt tears roll down his cheeks. The penis was shoved down his throat again. It hurt. Like fire against his abused lips. Stiles couldn’t help biting.

Immediately the cock was withdrawn. Dane slapped Stiles across the face, like a whiplash. Hard. Stiles touched his eyes, knew the slap would leave marks. And the memory of it, which hurt more than the actually slap , would linger for years after.

Stiles was crying in earnest now, little sobs poured out him and his distressed scent filled the room.

Dane wrapped his fingers around Stiles’s neck. “Shut up you worthless bitch.”

Stiles couldn’t speak, couldn’t cry with those fingers around his throat.

After Stiles quieted down, Dane removed those sausage fingers from his throat and stroked the bruises.

Then he came all over Stiles’s face.

After he was done, Stiles found himself curled on the ground. He was watching himself, as if he was far away, far off, standing outside his body.

Dane was speaking.

“I’m so happy to have found you little omega slut. I bet Theodore already got a taste of you, right?” Dane stroked Stiles’s ass. “You’re going to be my perfect little toy. I’m going to train you to come with my cock down your throat. I’m going to fuck that ass every single night until you can’t sit without thinking of me. This beautiful butt, is going to carry my imprint and my seed. And if you’re really, really good, I won’t even share you with anyone else”

Stiles was silent, curled up in fetal position on the floor, his face sticky with cum burning in his eyes.

 But Stiles wasn’t really there with Dane, he was outside of himself, watching Dane kicked the kid lying on the ground who looked like Stiles, the pathetic omega kid who was curled up as if he was a fucking stupid useless child.

After Dane left. Stiles staggered to the bathroom and washed his face. And then he staggered all the way upstairs to Theodore’s dorm and knocked on the door.

**(Rape scene end)**

Theodore opened the door to see Stiles reeking of cum and fear, with a bruise forming under his right eye and a ring of fine thumb bruises across his neck. In a hoarse voice Stiles whispered, “I didn’t know where else to go. Theodore, help me” and then Stiles dropped to his knees on the hardwood floor. “Please”.

* * *

 

**Derek:**

Derek was worried. He could have sworn his mate was in heat. He wasn’t completely sure, it was more like a lingering knowing.

And that wasn’t good.

An omega in heat was an omega in danger. In heat, most omegas desperately needed an alpha to ease their symptoms. And considering the fact that Stiles had been on his suppressants, the heat his omega would experience would be longer and perhaps more intense than a usual one.  While in heat, Stiles would lose control if his wits. He could be killed, raped or otherwise hurt. Derek  was now more worried than ever.

He kept the tether open. Strangely, perhaps because Stiles had reached for him, the bond between them had strengthened and Derek felt better than he had in a while. Stiles’s reciprocation meant that the bond now went both ways and it was easy for Derek to both visualize and reach for Stiles’s mind across a great distance. However, Derek left the bond alone. Stiles had enough to worry about right now.

Derek left his hotel room for the first time in three days.

He dialed the Agent’s phone number. After a couple of tries, Derek was frustrated that he received nothing but a dial tone. What the hell was wrong with this Agent Smith guy?

Derek left the hotel to find multiple men in black suits milling around the front door of the hotel.

“Excuse me,” Derek asked politely, “Where is Agent Smith?”

The random black suited man shrugged. “He’s at home with a cold.”

“Well,” Derek growled, “tell him to get over it and get over to the hotel. Now”

Facing down Derek’s intimidating stare, the man seemed to quiver, “Will do, Mr. Hale”

Derek sat down to wait in the hotel lobby.

“What have you been doing while Mr. Smith has been absent?” Derek asked a few of the OCS agents pointedly.

“Well,” one brave agent answered, “there wasn’t much to do. We’ve been sending out alerts throughout Uruguay for anyone who might have seen your mate, Mr. Stilinski. We’ve questioned a few suspects…”

Derek scoffed condescendingly, “You guys are worse than useless. Sending out alerts through Uruguay when my mate is already in Brazil. Idiotic. Didn’t any one of you bother to chase through the common omega escape routes or all you all fools?”

One suited agent with a shaved head piped up, “I did. Here are the most common omega escape routes,” the agent brought a labtop over to Derek. “Using OCS data, I’ve been able to create an algorithm that can guess with 85% certainty the escape route an omega will take. I’ve been trying to get OCS to use, but, you know, they don’t think betas are as good as alphas”

Derek ignored the beta’s flippant complaint.

“Show me” Derek demanded.

The Agent pulled up a map of South America. “Where did your omega say he was?”  the man asked.

“Porte Alegre. Brazil” Derek’s response was clipped.

The agent typed in a bunch of coordinated into the computer, immediately three paths light up.

“There’s a 33% chance he’s going to take a path deep into Bolivia and cross from there into Paraguay, 15% chance he’ll take the Argentinian route. And a 52% chance that he’ll cross into Brazil through the Friendship Bridge. Considering that Stiles is educated,” the agent tapped in another few lines of code, “ and possibly knows about the danger of the Argentinian route, that upps the chances to 92% likelihood he’ll take the pathway towards the Friendship Bridge”

Derek spent a few minutes looking at the map. “and how sure are you about this?”

The Agent grinned, flashing brilliant white teeth, then shrugged a suited shoulders, “about 85% sure. I mean, it makes sense. Most successful crossing happens on that route. It’s easier to get into Paraguay because many drug smugglers also pass through Brazil also. I mean, that’s probably where your mate is”

Derek nodded.

“What’s your name beta?”

“Boyd,” the beta answered.

“Grab six other agents you can trust. We’re going to the Friendship Bridge” Derek ordered.

“Bur Mr. Hale,” another agent blurted out, “aren’t you going to wait for the Lead Agent?”

Derek fixed a killing glare on the agent that spoke up, “I have an omega that is in heat, in danger, wandering through Brazil, possibly ripe to be sold into slavery by smugglers. I don’t have time to give a fuck about the Agent’s cold. When that prissy bitch gets here, you can tell him where we went. But now? You need to find me a small armored car and get the fuck out of my way” Derek growled.

The agent didn’t even question Derek. Just swallowed and ducked his head away from the alphas killing glare.

“Yes, Mr. Hale”

* * *

 

**Stiles:**

Stiles was fucked.

And this time it was for real. He couldn’t even chuckle about it this time. Things were very very bad.

First, he was going into heat.

Second, while he had been mind speaking to Derek, his backpack had been stolen, which, in the ghettos of Porto Alegre was not a great surprise. Goodbye to most of his money and suppressants and drugs and Charon’s sandwiches.

He still had the book though. Not that it was much consolation/

Third, he had managed to find Anubis, the smuggler Charon had sent him to. Stiles had been prepared to beg, plead, do anything to get Anubis to take him into Paraguay. Anubis took one look at him and said, “no”.

“What do you mean, no?” Stiles had asked, “Charon sent me. I have his book. He said you would help me!”

Anubis smiled, “Do you know who Anubis was in ancient Egyptian mythology?”

Stiles groaned. “Look, I don’t understand the hard on you guys have for Ancient Greek and Ancient Egypt. And I don’t care. You have to take me to Paraguay”

Anubis kept grinning that uncanny grin, “Anubis weighed the hearts of men to decide whether a soul was pure enough to enter the realm of the dead. And you, dear Mr. Stilinski, have been judged wanting.”

“What?” Stiles asked, “Why?”

Anubis’s grin faded, “You’re really going to ask me that? During your tenure at Baroff & Sons, do you ever remember a case involving “The Flag of Peace”?”

Stiles closed his eyes and tried to remember. The Flag of Peace was an omega rights group. They were funded by an embezzler by the name of Alice who was siphoning money from the government. Baroff & Sons had been called to help with the case. Kostos,his coworker, bless his dull brain, had a breakthrough with the case and had been able to nab Alice. However, it was Stiles who had figured out the names of all the high level associates of the flag’s vast network. Stiles had, of course, like a proper alpha citizen, turned those names over to the government without a second thought.

_Oh shit._

Anubis seemed to realize the moment when Stiles’s face lit up with recognition. “This is for Alice,” he whispered.

Anubis clicked his fingers and a few masked men seemed to materialize out of the shadows.

“Get this filthy rat out of here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't edit this as much as I would like, in order to get it to you soon ( and stop dragging my feet on it, I'll explain my choices in the end notes in the next chapter).


	11. Dog Eat Dog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Stiles learns it is better to be feared than loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings**   
>  _Copious drug use. mind control. rape noncon. flashbacks. PTSD. terribly coping skills._

**Stiles**

Stiles was thrown, unceremoniously out of the apartment, onto the ground. The next morning found Stiles huddled in an alley, curled up, sweat flashing cold and then hot across his forehead, shaking in terror.

_Alphas are going to find me. Hurt me. Have to get away. Have to be safe._

A dark haired man appeared, standing right at the entrance of Stiles’s alleyway. He was short, but not squat, whip thin, with muscles that looked vicious, like he was a trained fighter. He reeked of alpha.

“I heard you were looking for a smuggler to talk you to Paraguay. My name is Julios Ortiz. I can help you,” Julios came over to Stiles and extended a hand.

Stiles shakily got off the ground, trying to brush the refuse off his jeans.

“I don’t have any money” Stiles said plaintively.

“Don’t worry, we can arrange something,” the man smiled.

Stiles knew.

He knew he shouldn’t go with this strange man that any guy who came to him in an alley, offering help, was trouble.

But he didn’t know what else to do.

As Stiles got deeper into his heat, his scent would draw all the alphas around a five mile radius. He would be gang raped and maybe die.

He didn’t know anyone in Brazil, there was no where he could stay. He had run and run and run until he had run out of options.

He had to take a leap of faith.

Just like he had with Theodore.

* * *

 

Theodore had probably saved Stiles’s life.

He had gathered the kneeling Stiles in his arms that night, and made sure Stiles washed, bathed and managed to eat something, whispering to Stiles that he would take care of things.

The next day, Dane was mysteriously expelled from school and Stiles moved into Theodore’s room.

Stiles moved on autopilot through the next few days, shell shocked by trauma. He took his finals and did terribly on almost all of them. If Stiles hadn’t had such good grades going into the finals, he would probably have been kicked out of school. Luckily for Stiles, he managed to scrape by with straight Bs and B-s in every class, even his most beloved maths. He had taken the exams, feeling like he was just staring at instructions without really reading it.

He tried to write essays, but honestly, all the words seemed to jumble up in his mind.

He fell asleep halfway through his AP World History final and his AP teacher was so worried he held Stiles back and asked if he was allright. Stiles laughed bitterly and explained he had just had very little sleep.

Which was true. Stiles couldn’t sleep without reliving the event, fearing that he would wake up and Dane would be towering over him. He could barely eat because everything tasted of Dane’s cum.

On the fifth day of finals, Theodore took to having Stiles sleep with him. Whenever Stiles woke up from nightmares, Theodore was there to hold him and ruffle his hair in the simple way omegas soothed each other. It was only because of Theodore’s help that Stiles didn’t fail out of Exeter his freshman year.

Before he left Stiles had haltingly thanked Theodore for, well everything.

Theodore had simply placed a soothing hand against the omega pressure point on Stiles’s neck and pulled Stiles close.

“I know. Stiles. I know”

Stiles led his head rest against Theodore’s chest, his nose picked up the sweet scent of omega from Theodore now that he knew what to look for. Now that Theodore had shared his secret with Stiles that Theo was an omega too.

“Even if you know. I still have to say it. I could not have made it without you,” Stiles whispered.

Then, pale, shaken, dark circles under his eyes, he boards the plane to Beacon Hills. Over that summer, Stiles had the argument with his father. And then never spoke about his “omega problem” again.

During sophomore year, Stiles once again roomed with Theodore. And Theodore, nicknamed Theo by Stiles, taught Stiles everything he knew. He taught Stiles how to recognize good suppressant batches from bad ones. How to make sure he never had another heat again. How to use his omega scent to drug alphas into doing exactly as he wished. How to resist alpha compulsions, the risks stealth omegas took in society. He taught Stiles how to fake being an alpha effortlessly, how to be cruel and cold and calculating, how to fuck like the other person you were with was just a meaningless piece of meat you were using to get off.

He taught Stiles that there was nothing such as love just strong people and weak people. Omegas were stupid and silly and weak, that’s why they deserved to be breeders, and to be stepped on.

But Theo and Stiles were strong. Sophomore year, Stiles did a lot of crazy things because he didn’t really care. Didn’t give a damn anymore. He fucked so many alphas whose names he didn’t know, drugging them out of their minds with omega sweet scent. He slept with about fifty people that year, one person every week and sometimes two.

Why?

Because he couldn’t escape the feel of Dane’s face, Dane’s hands. He had to get back his power. Never would he be that sniveling omega again, never would he be weak.

He read Machiavelli’s “The Prince” and agreed. It was damn better to be feared than loved. Stiles didn’t want love. Not anymore.

He wanted control. He remembered when Theo first taught him how to drug alphas with omega scent. He had taken the alpha up to Stiles’s room, some nameless freshman or other.

Theo and Stiles never gave names to their bed partners, preferring to refer to them as holes or targets. In fact, they had a score sheet going for who could sleep with the most people that year and awarded badges by how many people they fucked.

**( Rape below)**

Anyway, the freshman was lying on the Stiles’s bed as Theo began what they both referred to as the induction.

Theo was a master at it. He would talk to the alpha in a smooth, unhurried way, layering his voice with just the right amount of omega compulsion.  
“Are you hard, oh you dear thing, come on get hard for me you little bitch” Theo would say, his voice breathy.

Then he covered the target in a pheromone haze as Stiles watched, thinking there was something magical about the deftness with which Theo worked.

And then when the freshman was loose limbed and hard, mind blissed out on omega scent, Theo fucked him into the mattress, leaving trails of cum pooling from the target’s ass.

 After he fucked him, Theo took a picture of the freshman with his camera phone and then gentled the alpha to sleep. Sitting on the bed, next to Stiles Theo grinned.

He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and smoked. Students weren’t supposed to smoke in the dorms, but Theo was a fucking phenom. He could do what he wanted and no one dared to say anything, His parents were wealthy and superpowerful. Theo also had dirt on a lot of people,

**( Rape ends)**

Stiles sat next to Theo, looking at the way the omega’s big masculine hands curled around the small cigarette. Theo turned to Stiles with an indulgent smile.

“See Stiles, that’s how you fuck an alpha. Alphas,” Theo scoffed, “They’ve been taught all their lives that omegas are sweet, vulnerable, and needy of protection. But that’s a lie. Why do they lock up all the omegas and send them to omega schools? Because if omegas knew, really knew how to harness the power they had, we would rule them. Own them. Destroy them.”

Theo stubbed out his dying cigarette on the boy’s shoulder, leaving a smoldering burn behind. He smiled like a cat that had eaten the canary.

“These alphas are like babes in the woods for us, not ready for the power an omega has. And we’re going to destroy them all.”

Stiles looked at the sleeping freshman on his bed, naked and bare to the world and tried to ignore  the sick feeling flipping in his stomach.

“But isn’t what you did, wrong?” Stiles asked, “The kid said he didn’t want to be ass fucked and you just did it anyway. Didn’t you kind of rape him?”

Theo turned his angry glare onto Stiles, “That’s gold, coming from you Stiles.” Theodore pressed his palms to either side of Stiles’s cheeks.

“It’s a dog eat dog world Stiles and I, for one, do not plan to be eaten. You saw how Dane acted. Do you think he cared about silly things like rape? Do you think those omegas sold off to breeder farms or alphas who will only use them and then use them up get any choice about consent? Don’t be stupid Stiles. I’m just treating them like they treat us” Theodore said calmly.

“But,” Stiles began, aware now that he was pushing his luck, “He’s going to wake up, after you’ve dumped him in his room, cum leaking from his ass and feel—“

“What? Violated?  And I thought we’d come so far, Stiles. So what the fuck do I care if some freshman hole feels violated? You know, for once in his life he’ll know what it’s like to be an omega, to feel that pain in his ass every single day, to be violated all the fucking time. For once he feels stupid and useless and small, just like an omega. Don’t bother feeling any sympathy for these monsters, Stiles. It a waste of your time.” Theodore counseled.

And so it was.

Stiles adored Theo, practically worshipped him. As far as Stiles was concerned the sun and moon rose up Theo’s ass every morning. He’d do Theo’s homework, if asked. And every night, Stiles slept in Theo’s bed, breathing his safe scent, knowing that he was going to be ok.

School was another thing, Stiles was getting a mixture of A’s and B’s but was not performing anywhere near his potential. He didn’t care. He was too busy sneaking out to parties on the weekends with Theo, learning how to relish the tartness of whiskey, smoking Cuban cigars and doing lines of coke. He would hang out in Theo’s second house that was conveniently near the school and smoke weed on Fridays instead of doing his problem sets. He didn’t care that he was not nominated to be on the American Math Olympiad team. He didn’t care about anything except being where Theo was, except fucking another alpha or beta guy or gal ( he wasn’t particular) down to the ground and then kicking said person out of his bed as soon as it was done, so he could go cuddle with Theo. He got a reputation for being a heartless bastard.

It made him smile.

He didn’t go home to his chucklefuck of a father that Thanksgiving. But he did get high off Ativans and kiss Theo’s lips and neck and everywhere.

He let Theo and only Theo fuck him.

Theo had laughed in his ear.

“You’re the guy who fucks everyone, people say. And I’m fucking you. What does that make me?”

Stiles didn’t know.

If you asked Stiles he would never say he loved Theo, he would say they were buds you know, just alphas out to fuck anything that moved.

But when he woke up in an empty bed and ran over to Theo’s warmth, tracing his hands over that smooth skin, resting his head against those golden curls, he knew what the lay of the land was.

It was Christmas when Stiles began to wake up out of his self-destructive spiral. He felt hollow, empty inside. He had just finished fucking Amy, a nice beta girl from neighboring Choate. She had a streak of freakiness in her and loved facials.

“Cum on my face,” she had pleaded.

And Stiles, was not going to let anything stupid like PTSD get in the way of good sex.  He was an alpha and alphas don’t give up the chance to give random beta girls facials.

He managed to do it, he had no idea how and then while she lay sated, he ran out of the room to the bathroom on the second floor where he proceeded to throw up all his lunch, breakfast and he swore, perhaps last night’s dinner, until his throat was as raw as a scraped carrot.

He then rested his face against the toilet and closed his eyes, _Dane using his mouth like a prop. On your knees omega. Filthy slut. Cum whore”_ All things that he had said to various bed partners over the last year. He could see Dane’s cock moving in and out of him and suddenly the cock seemed a lot like his.

“No” he whimpered, “Please no”

Again he felt like he was floating. Outside of his body, watching some other Stiles, some weak Stiles curl up on the bathroom floor tiles sobbing from the pain.

Knocks came on the door, then banging, it was Amy.

“Hey, Stiles, are you okay?” she yelled.

“Theo”, Stiles breathed through his roughened throat, “I need Theo. Please”

Amy ran.

Stiles continued to watch himself retch out more bile, shuddering as he held himself, anxiety spiking high.

Theo’s voice came through the locked door.

“Where is he?”

“We were having sex and then he just ran to the bathroom and got really sick, he sounds like he’s…crying?” Amy said, confused.

“What were you two doing together?”

“Having sex. I told you that already”

“What act specifically? I need you to be specific.”

“What the fuck, this is embarrassing, I came to get help, not to be interrogated over my sex life”

A scuffle.

“Tell me”

Amy’s voice sounded like she was in tears, her voice sounded tight.

“He was cumming all over my face”

“Jesus, you fucking whore. Get out of here”

(footsteps retreated)

Theo leaned against the door. “Stiles?”

“Theo” Stiles whimpered.

“Open the door”

Slowly, Stiles crawled to the door. When he opened it, Theo enfolded him in a hug. “shh, shh, Stiles”

Stiles sobbed, “I don’t wanna do this anymore. I don’t like it. Please, Theo. So sorry. I c-c-can’t”

Theo held onto Stiles with infinite care, hands cradling Stiles against his chest and carefully placed Stiles on the bed. Then he wrapped his long arms around Stiles until the trembling stopped.

“I just wanted to keep you safe and make you strong. You don’t have to do so many people if you don’t want to Stiles. It’s ok. I’ve got you.”

Stiles simply melted against the warmth of that scent, letting its safety soothe him, the protection of it.

He thought he heard Theo say “I love you” but he couldn’t be sure. The next day Stiles and Theo pretended nothing had happened, but Stiles stopped sleeping around with anyone except Theo for the rest of high school. He felt that the bodies were all empty, the sex meaningless, he only wanted Theo. Now. Forever.

On Christmas, Stiles sent a text to his father. “Sorry I’m missing the holidays John, have to spend it in school catching up on assignments”

 Then, he put the phone down and did another line of coke.

“Now where were we?” Stiles turned to Theo who was sweetly sucking Stiles’s cock.

“Haha. Perfect Christmas” Stiles snickered.

After Stiles had come, Theodore asked Stiles, “So what did you get me for Christmas you bastard?”

Stiles grinned, “Christmas sex”

Anal sex specifically.

Theodore was slow, gentle and sweet, everything a lover should be. Stiles basked in the warmth of the evening and as they did tequila shots off each other’s backs.

At 11 pm on Christmas, Stiles heard a car arrive at the door.

“Who is that?” Theo asked.

Stiles looked at the man who opened the door of the Toyota Camry.

“Shit, that’s my dad. We are so fucked. Hide the coke”

The Sheriff opened the door to Stiles, who had hastily put on sweatpants and a T-shirt.

“Hi John, what are you doing here?” Stiles asked his father.

John stood at the door in full cop regalia. “I came to find out why my only son doesn’t care enough to call me when he isn’t coming home for Christmas or thanksgiving.  And I got your school report”

“So what?” Stiles asked.

“A C+ in math? I knew something wasn’t right”

And just as the Sheriff was speaking Theo picked that moment to peek out.

“Hi,” the Sheriff smiled.

Stiles looked from Theo to his father.

“This is my school buddy, Theo” Stiles explained nervously.

The Sheriff smiled. It was not a nice smile.

“Come on, Stiles. Did you think I was born yesterday? If this is your boyfriend, you should have at least invited him over for thanksgiving. Oh, I forget, you skipped that”

Stiles looked at his father, and in that moment, he knew he was not going to get away with this shit.

Even Theo looked thrown.

“Invite me in” the Sheriff ordered. And the two boys, despite all their exploits were still young boys who shuddered under Sheriff’s armored gaze.

The Sheriff walked into the kitchen and opened up random drawers.  
“ahh,” the Sheriff exclaimed, finding the Ziploc bag of white dust, the spoon and the razor Theo used to cut lines.

“So, it’s Theo, isn’t it?” the Sheriff asked, looking at Theo with falcon sharp eyes.

“ How are you? Nice to meet my son's new boyfriend. I was just wondering... how long have you been giving my son coke?” the Sheriff asked conversationally.

Stiles immediately shielded Theo with his body. “I chose to use the coke, dad. I like it. I got it, not him”

“With what money?” the Sheriff asked.

“This is premium, uncut, crystal pure coke. It must have been pretty expensive, and I know for sure that I’m not sending you that money” , the Sheriff said.

You could hear a pin drop in the room.

“I’m waiting” the sheriff tapped his fingers.

Stiles, for once, had nothing to say.

“Pack your bags, Stiles. You’re coming home with me. And if I find out you’re using at home or worse,addicted, so help me God, I won’t let you come back to this school. You’ll stay at home with me at our local high school” the Sheriff ordered.

Stiles ran upstairs. “Oh God, I hate you. I hate you so much John”

The Sheriff now turned his attention onto Theo. “Theo, I don’t know whether that's your name or what the hell your name is, but if you keep taking advantage of Stiles like this, keep introducing my son to these drugs and crap, so help me God I will bring down the power of a hundred law enforcement agencies on your ass. I will bury you”

He leaned close to Theo, “Do you understand that?”

Theo closed his eyes in resignation. “Yes. I do. You may not believe me in this Sheriff, but I want the best for him.”

“Sure got some way of showing it”, the Sheriff scoffed.

“You’ve got 10 minutes Stiles” the Sheriff yelled.

* * *

 

Stiles got in a lot of trouble during his Christmas break. It was two weeks of hell, like boot camp.

His father confiscated his phone and he was not allowed to talk to Theo. He started to withdraw from the coke. He got the sweats, the shakes, the loss of pleasure and the bad dreams.

 Theo wasn’t there to hold him.

One night, after being shouted awake by Stiles’s begging from another nightmare, the Sheriff came in and sat by Stiles’s bed.

“I know something bad happened to you.”

Stiles turned away so his father wouldn’t see his tear filled eyes.

“If it wasn’t really bad, my own son wouldn’t be lying, using drugs and skipping Thanksgiving. I know you don’t want to talk about it. But whatever it is, Stiles, you need to know that drugs and drink are not the answer. Hell, I drank myself a sea of whiskey after your mother’s death, but it still never brought her back. All those things can never fill the hole inside of you. Only you can. And this isn’t the way to cope,” his father continued.

“I know that you’ve been going through a lot of heavy stuff lately, but I want you to remember. Remember who you are. Remember the kid that wanted to be a mathematician like that French guy, Ben whatever? And hold on to that. Don’t disappoint me son. Whatever it is that’s got you feeling so worthless that you’re wasting your life, you have to let it go”

The Sheriff heard his son’s breathing deepen and assumed Stiles had fallen asleep.

He bent over his only child, “Whatever risks I’ve taken, mistakes I’ve made, I did it for you. I know I’m not always very good with this touchy feely thing, but I love you son. Get better.”

But Stiles heard every word.

The next day, Stiles came down the stairs around midafternoon, the withdrawal had passed, (thank God Stiles hadn’t gotten into too heavy cocaine use). 

Stiles saw his father sitting at the table. He had gotten Stiles’s favorite food, curly fries.

 Tears filled Stiles eyes as he realized that his father was trying his hardest in the best way he knew how.

He hugged his dad, hard, “I’m so sorry,” Stiles sobbed. “I’m sorry dad. I’m going to be a better son. I’ll make it up to you.”

And his father’s hug was everything he wanted it to be, John Stilinski smelled of beta, gunmetal and burger condiments, safe and predictable.

“It’s ok, son. It’s ok”

When Stiles got back to school in the spring. He had changed. Yes, he still loved Theo and sometimes slept with him, but Theo was the only one Stiles slept with. Just thinking of touching other people made him somewhat sick. He didn’t care so much that Theo wasn’t faithful, Stiles knew that no one held Theo’s heart the way he did, that the other people Theo fucked were just holes and he was the real love. Omegas and omegas weren’t supposed to be able to fall in love. All literature said it was impossible. But Theo and Stiles didn’t read that literature. They just were.

As Stiles came back to himself, he started to blossom. His grades went up, he started to love math again, and placed 2nd in the state math competition. He read books by Albert Camus and went to movies with Theo and his friends.

When people asked who Stiles was fucking, Stiles would respond with a wry smile “I’m saving myself for marriage, you know” and then roll his eyes and look at Theodore.

Stiles and Theodore were joined in their suite by Steve and Mark. Theo, Steve, and Mark would go party on Saturdays and Sundays and do the normal things like skipping class. But Stiles didn’t want to anymore. He had easily established his social cred at Exeter. He was both smart enough to start getting the best grades in his math class when he tried and effortlessly cool. To the female alphas and betas he was a mysterious intellectual, always reading some obscure novel. an alpha who flirted effortlessly. half the girls in his grade had their panties in a twist when he said hello.

But everyone in Theo’s inner circle knew the truth. Stiles was hopelessly gone over Theo. He still slept in Theos’ bed at night, cleaned Theo up when he was out partying all weekend and made Theo’s hangover cures. And if Theo only reciprocates Stiles's affection in quiet ways, like little notes in his backpack, a sweet kiss pressed to his forehead when everyone was sleeping, Stiles honestly didn’t care. Theo had saved his life. Built him up from nothing, been his safe haven in the storms around him, rocked him to sleep when he had nightmares.  For once, Stiles was perfectly content with how things were.

If only life would be so simple

* * *

 

**Stiles**

Stiles comes to in the back of a van.

This is not good, his instincts scream. Around him are eight frightened omegas. Three omega women, four omega men and one omega child. Their faces are white and pale and stretched.

 _Okay, a smuggling ring, you knew you were walking into this. How can you get out of this situation?_   Stiles thought to himself, trying to be calm.

But just as he’s trying to be calm, a deep desire hits him, like a painful emptiness inside of him.

He needs his alpha. Needs Derek, now, badly, inside of him. Stiles shakes, it’s so painful. He hasn’t had a heat since he was fifteen.

 _What will I do now?_ Stiles asks.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay:  
> So in one way it's weird, in these ending notes in which I talk directly to you the reader. But I like talking about why I am writing what I am, I think it makes me a better writer, more reflective and more willing to consider a lot of sides of things. Some of you told me you didn't want any rape non con. And I know that some of you will not be able to stand this and will go, and while that saddens me, I accept those choices. What I do want to write a little bit about, I guess for me and you guys is why I chose to drop the noncon scene in there. 
> 
> First things first, this fic is not like my other fic, "Your Shattered Reflection" in which I am employing gratuitous torture, I have two "kind of rapes" planned for this portion of the story, so there is one more left. 
> 
> **Why rape?**  
>  The A/B/O universe, I would argue is not one in which many people can give consent. The hormone driven flush omegas go through, the addition of soul mates, it all seems lovely and starry eyed, but the harsh reality is it's also a universe where it's hard to claw out space for freely choosing love that's not predestined. That's kind of a problematic things. In a universe in which omegas are second class, and seen as for breeding and sex, and even worse, completely out of commission for heats, and alphas have to prove their worth through sleeping with omegas, there is absolutely no way rapes will not happen. If I wrote a totally rape free universe then it wouldn't be true or make much sense at all. Of course Stiles will be raped at least once in his lifetime, especially because his father kind of left him out there without telling him the truth of who he really is. I consider the Sheriff as flawed but good guy. But I think not telling Stiles that he is an omega was a completely terrible decision on the part of the Sheriff. idiotic, really and dangerous as hell.
> 
> 2) This is something i expect to see in the comments and I really welcome a robust debate about this. However, I will state my position. I consider what Theo is doing to be rape. In most A/B/O universes, the omegas are the only oppressed, quintessentially put down and destroyed. However, I find that awfully dull. Like. borring. Real people manipulate systems and are manipulated by them. Theo may be an omega, but he's got money, name and power. So while he's oppressed by his secondary gender, he also is powerful in other ways. I want all the gray. I want Stiles to neither be a perfectly good guy or a bad guy. He's not superman, he's a normal guy.
> 
> 3) The rape fits perfectly with Stiles's backstory. Why he hates commitment. Why he's so afraid of alphas. Why he would never give Derek a chance. I can't resist an opportunity to explore this.
> 
> Anyway, sorry for the long winded explanation of my thinking. And for the long wait! But you know I have schoolwork and exams to pass and classes to go to and writing this takes like 7 hours ( how do other writers do it!)  
> Enjoy ! All errors are mine.  
> XOXO- Sometimesyougetthebear


	12. The Day all Runners Come....

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we find out why Stiles runs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: references to a suicide, not of a main character

**Stiles**

Stiles comes to in the back of a van.

This is not good, his instincts scream. Around him are four frightened omegas. A mom and her daughter, a young woman and a man. Their faces are all white and pale and stretched. The light of four pale moon faces illuminates the van.

_Okay, you knew you were walking into this. Calm down. You can get out of this situation._ It’s a mantra Stiles repeats to himself, often and always, whenever he feels the first slivers of panic.

It’s a lie.

Stiles is not getting out of this one.

He can feel the heat rise , the quiet tingling inside him, the wetness that gathers in a trickle in the deep inner parts of himself. The scent that emanates from him, a full flower of omega in bloom. The weakness. The shame. He hates it, He hates himself.

He’s _losing control._

Just like Theodore.

* * *

 

In Junior Year Stiles has hit his stride. He likes his classes, he works with his teachers. He explains that after a tough two years settling in, he’s ready for greater responsibility. He joins clubs, and though his start is late, he is slowly given more and more positions of responsibility. After class, Stiles gets private lessons with his BC calculus teacher who has recognized that Stiles legitimately has a gift for the numbers. Stiles takes physics and learns about the way the word works, daydreams about the multiplicity of forces involved in the swing of a pendulum, the push of a ball down the hill. At night, he feels the gravity tying him down to his school, his work and Theo.

Always Theo. Like a lodestone, a star in his center, the brightly swirling circle in an uncertain universe. His candle in the dark.

But something is wrong with Theo.

Theo is losing his magnetism. His star is imploding. Theo sleeps too much, and drinks too much and smokes too much weed. He is failing his classes and Stiles even does some of Theo’s homework to help him. But Theo won’t talk to him about anything important. He teases Stiles just enough about Stiles’s break from sex, he makes all the right gestures, says all the right words, but he _isn’t there._  Stiles would know. You get to know a guy when you’ve spent a year and a half curled around them in bed, when you wake up smelling them on your skin day in and day out. When there are a thousand conversations between you back and forth, when you both share a secret that no one else can know. Stiles can see behind the mask to the emptiness underneath but he doesn’t know how to bridge the chasm, to meet Theo, to save him.

One day, Stiles learns the truth of the matter. He comes home to the room both he and Theo share and finds Theo curled up in sweat and smelling the sickly sweet smell of an omega. Theo groans and opens his eyes to see Stiles standing there.

“I didn’t want …. you to see me like this” Theo mutters.

Stiles is confused. “How is this happening? What’s going on?”

Theo laughs a sad sardonic smile. It is the smile of a kid who is much too young for the weight the world has thrust upon him. He turns to Stiles and states the obvious.

“I’m in heat, you dolt”

“But you’re on suppressants” Stiles counters.

Theo’s eye get cloudier and he twists on the bed, trying to get comfortable.

“They’re not working”

Stiles ends up wiping Theo’s brow with a wet cloth, and hugging him through the knight, muffling Theo with a gag when Theo cries out for an alpha. The next morning, they tiptoe around each other like frightened mice. And don’t speak of it.

Stiles spends a lot of time trying to figure out what is wrong.

His first guess is that Theo’s suppressants have been tampered with. It’s the most likely possibility anyway, after all, suppressants are black market drugs given to omegas. Therefore, like all illegal drugs, suppressants carry the risk of being cut with other substances, like coke or something more innocuous like aspirin.

He takes some of Theo’s tablets and crushes them into a fine paste. Late at night, he sneaks into the chemistry lab and does a reverse titration to determine the purity of the suppressants.

96% pure.

With his first hunch discarded, Stiles turns to google. He has to download tor and trawl through dozens of darknet pages. “Why my suppressants no longer work”. Stiles googles.

He finds that suppressants become ineffective for two reasons.

  1.       The omega has met his or her true mate and nothing, not even suppressants can deny biology.
  2.       OIS. Omega Insensitivity Syndrome.



No one knows how many omegas suffer from OIS, because, well, omegas aren’t supposed to be using suppressants. What people do know is that after prolonged suppressant use, sometimes omegas become accustomed to having large amounts of levogone (the principal chemical of suppressants) in their bodies and no longer respond to the elevated levogone supplied by the suppressants. And science had no work around, no cure.

Stiles decided he now needed to talk to Theo.

Stiles corners Theo on one night, a weekday, when Theo is pretending to do homework for a change and not drunk out of his mind.

“Theo,” Stiles sits on the bed near Theo’s desk, “Have you found your mate?”

The thought is painful to Stiles, seeing his lover, his _Theo_ , in the arms of someone else, it brings up a dark possessive feeling rumbling inside of him. But—and how bad is that?—he really hopes that Theo has found someone, because having a mate is better than OIS. Anything is better than OIS.

Theo turns back to his homework, resolutely trying to ignore Stiles.

Stiles scoots closer to Theo, their legs almost touching, “Theo, I need to know” Stiles whispers.

“Why?” And Theo’s voice is harsh and ugly, “You’re afraid you won’t have anyone to fuck? No one to hold you when you snivel like a baby at night?”

Stiles ignores the barbs, knowing that they are meant to distract him from the real problem.

“I love you so much, Theo. I just need to know how I can help you. Please.” Stiles begs.

A moment of silence ensues. Dust swirls in patterns across the room, invisible to the naked eye.

A single tear slowly makes its way down from the corner of Theo’s eye, resting, resplendent, on his cheek.

“I haven’t felt anything. No prick, no shock of recognition that heralds a mate. Nothing’s wrong with my suppressants either. (Don’t think I didn’t notice you testing them Stiles.) Occam’s razor Stiles” Theo says shakily.

“The simplest answer is always true,” Stiles says numbly. His mouth feels frozen, he’s not sure he understands the words he’s spoken or what it means for both of them.

That night, Stiles curls up even more securely into Theo’s arms, wraps tight around him like a starfish, because he thinks if he holds onto Theo, onto what they have, tightly enough, no one will take Theo away from him.

Stiles likes maths. He loves it. But chemistry and biology is kind of a mystery to him. He likes the high world of abstract math proofs, logical abstractions, but trying to make those abstractions work in real life, transmuting the mystery of X into the right compound in a chemical formula is just hard.

But even if Stiles was a budding Nobel Peace Prize winner, he doesn’t have access to the chemicals used to make suppressants. He doesn’t have anyone he can run tests on. If he were in one of those movies he likes, like James Bond “Tomorrow Never Dies” or a “A View to Kill”, Stiles would simply go into a lab and add a bunch of drops together and in a boom of purple dust, he would have the antidote to the OIS syndrome.

But Stiles’s life is not a James Bond movie.

He doesn’t get easy answers, and neat resolutions and the beautiful lover on his arms and sailing off into the sunset.

So Stiles works, he throws himself into studying for the American Math Olympiad like a man possessed. And when the OCS passes a new law requiring the mandatory testing of all alphas and betas at 16, well, Stiles excuses himself because he will be _oh so busy trying to represent America at the International Math Olympiad_ and so sorry he can’t make it for their Omega testing. Maybe some other time.

Theo simply bribes his way out of it.

When Stiles comes home from the competition in Ljubljana, simmering in slight disappointment (because he had only won a silver medal), it is to a Theo that is more quiet and subdued than he’s ever seen him.

“I’m not getting better Stiles. We have to start thinking about The Plan” Theo says sadly.

“No Theo. No. Things are not that desperate.”

“Think about it Stiles, with how I smell, it’s only a matter of time before people discover I’m an omega. And when they find out who I am, you’ll go down with me”

“I thought the plan was a joke. Not a serious idea, Theo. It’s not too late, ask your parents to hide you”

“My parents don’t know I’m an omega Stiles”

“Wha-at?”

“I was raised by a series of nannies, my alpha mother and father were much too busy running their companies and fighting with each other to notice my secondary gender. And I’m 3rd born amongst my five siblings. I just kind of blended in.”

Stiles swallowed his shock.

“How did you learn everything? All about what you should do?” Stiles asked.

“My uncle was a stealth omega for years, he taught me everything he knew. How to act like an alpha, where to buy suppressants, which scent to use. But he supposedly went to Paraguay years ago and I’ve never heard from him again.”

“Look,” Stiles says with a voice that expresses calm he doesn’t feel, “We could run away to Paraguay, or Panama, or any of the omega federation countries. We’d be free.”

Theo’s laugh is bitter.

“And take the 88% risk that we’d be caught? No, Stiles, it is better this way”

Stiles disagrees. He begs Theo, asking him every night, sends him little notes in code. Theo only gets thinner and quieter. Stiles plots how much money they would need to getaway, where they’d need to go, and every aspect of the trip they would take together.  Theo stops going out with his friends, stops having sex, dwindling before Stiles’s eyes. Stiles tells Theo that he is loved. He holds Theo in his arms, and watches movies with him and prays that Theo will just be sensible and use any one of the hundred plans Stiles thinks of that is _not_ a suicidal death wish.

It’s a warm day in May when Theo tells Stiles. “Today would be a good day”

Stiles pins Theo to the wall of their room and shakes him so hard, his teeth rattle in his head.

“Stop saying it. It’s crazy talk Theo. It’s not a good day today or tomorrow or the next day or ever. Please Theo”

Theo catches his breath and looks up at Stiles, blue eyes glittering in the early spring sun.

“There’s no hope”

For the first time in his life, Stiles falls to his knees and begs his lover.

“Do you love me? Have you ever loved me?”

Theo gazes at Stiles sightlessly.

“Please don’t do this to me, Theo. Please. Please. I would do anything for you. Just not this”

Theo lets Stiles quiet down and replies calmly, his voice resolute.

“It’s what I want”.

Stiles still doesn’t know how he managed to make himself do it. He doesn’t know where he finds the strength to walk to the Principal’s office, confess that he thought his roommate was an omega and turn in the suppressant pills he just happened to “find” on Theo’s countertop.

He doesn’t know how he timed his entrance so perfectly that the headmaster comes in while Theo appears to be in the process of raping an unresisting younger freshman whacked out on omega fumes.

He doesn’t know how he deals with it when he is lauded as an upstanding alpha for helping OCS capture an omega degenerate. He doesn’t know how he manages not to throw up when the OCS agent slaps his slimy hand on Stiles’s back in a gesture of praise.

“You did the right thing”

Stiles just wants to die slowly.

But that would be against the plan. See, the plan was that, only one of them gets caught, Stiles or Theo and not both. Theo threw himself on the fire to take the heat so Stiles could escape the frying pan.

But why does it feel like Stiles is burning?

Instead getting a prison sentence for rape, Theo is married off to an OCS agent. (After all omegas are too delicate to go to jail).

Theo probably would have preferred jail.

Stiles watches Theo walk down the aisle all in white, face fixed straight ahead, in a wedding that feels like a funeral.

He could see that something had died in his friend’s eyes. He could feel something dying inside of him, something beautiful and delicate like a paper crane, crushed.

No one holds Stiles when he goes to sleep anymore.

Stiles writes letters to Theo all through his senior year.

At first the replies are longer, rambling, Theo trying to pretend things were better than they were. But Stiles could read through the lines. Could see the pain, Theo pretended away.

 

And then the letters got shorter. Stiles waited longer for each letter, his heart aching inside of him glad of every paper missile because he knew that at least Theo was still alive. Even if he is getting raped every single night, Stiles can close his eyes and know Theo is there. Sometimes he imagines there’s a bond between them as tangible and bright as a red string of fate.

The letters from Theo stop at the end of his senior year. Stiles is getting ready to go to the University of Chicago. He goes to senior graduation only because his father asks, he then comes home and gets quietly drunk.

 

His sophomore year of college, Stiles can pretend he almost doesn’t hurt anymore. But he needs the closure, so one day, when he has a bit of extra money, he takes a road trip to find out where Theo is living. The address from the envelopes is a small house in Wisconsin. He pulls up to the driveway of a cheery brick house in a suburb that could be any suburb in a nondescript town.

He knocks on the door.

No answer.

There are no cars in the driveway, the doorbell has a fine coating of dust…

A nice old woman walks out of the house next door.

Stiles puts on his best alpha smile.

“Hi, I’m looking for Ian and Theo Smith. I’m an old college friend of theirs. I was told they lived here?” Stiles questions.

The woman’s face falls into a sad smile. “You poor dear. Ian left this house almost three months ago. He no longer needed a big house, you know, and he hoped a change of scene would make him feel better. Poor man. ”

Stiles felt increasing anxiety rise inside him.

“Wait? Why?”

The woman looked at Stiles in shock.

“You don’t know? Theo Smith committed suicide 3 months ago. He’s dead. Leaving that poor alpha grieving. Just cruel. You know in my day, the omegas knew their –“

Stiles cut off the woman curtly before she launched into her rant.

“Thanks for the information ma’am” Stiles addressed the old beta woman politely.

He did not stand around to receive any more lectures from the old woman, he had learned what he wanted to know.

Stiles knew other people would go to the burial site, grieve, bring flowers, talk to the dead.

Completely illogical. Dead people are just food for maggots and worms, they can’t hear you speak, they can’t hear you weep, they can’t soothe your hurts.

And anyway, Stiles didn’t want to think of his Theo, the one who was so brilliantly alive, lying on a coffin like a slab of white marble.

No, Stiles liked to think of Theo in motion, as effervescent as he was in the picture Stiles had of him. In Stiles’s picture, Theo is sitting on one of the chairs on the veranda of his house in New Hampshire. The chair is whicker white, sun is setting just behind Theo’s left shoulder and the trees are brilliant green in the spring background. Theo’s face is cracked open in a grin, cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth, eyes alight with laughter at something Stiles had said. Everything about Theo is open and relaxed, from his shirtless chest, to the casual way he lets his legs sprawl open, to his rumpled jeans. His blue eyes glitter like turquoise stones, little blue flames.

When Stiles is sad, when he wakes up at night and he thinks he can’t remember Theo’s smile, he goes back to that picture, the one where Theo was alive. And Stiles was in love.

_This is how Theo would want to be remembered_ , Stiles thinks.

Stiles is a stealth omega.

He knows his life is a risk, he knows he could wake up one day with OIS, or be bound to some stupid mate by a cruel trick of biology. He knows that he balances on a knife’s edge, and one day the gods will see fit to let him fall into the chasm of life.

He knows that one day _all runners must come, that earth will stop all sounds._

But, he promises himself,

_when that day comes, I’m not going to lay down like a beaten dog_

_I will not go gently into the night._

_That day_

_I’m going to run._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I stole quite liberally from A. E Housman's poem to an Athlete Dying Young.  
> Here's a link to the poem. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175749
> 
> and to be honest it was a sad chapter for me, I am hoping the story gets happier. 
> 
> This, by the way, marks the end of the flashbacks to Stiles's childhood. After this chapter, we'll be completely in the present day.


	13. Nature's revenge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek has an enlightening conversation with Boyd and Stiles makes a new friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: a near miss on rape and.... a few beatings ( but not graphic and kind of glossed over)

** Derek **

Derek was standing, drenched in rain, by the side of the some side road in Brazil.  He stood under a canopy of endless trees and endless green.  The rain falling blurred all the shapes and sounds around them, the cold seeped into everyone’s bones. The white jeep they had been riding was stalled on the road, tire slowly deflating, sizzling from the lost oxygen.

One of the OCS agents was slowly removing the deflated tire and enduring Derek’s angry glares.

“Can we go any faster?” Derek growled at the beta.

“I’m trying to go as fast as I can, sir” the nervous beta replied, “but if I don’t do it right then the tire could fall off  the car and we only have one spare tire” the man explained.

“Did I ask you for excuses, you whiny maggot? Shut up and get the tire on,” Derek ordered.

The beta flinched, and lowered his gaze, “Yes, sir”

Boyd had let all of Derek’s complaints go in silence, but even though he was a beta, he was no pushover. Derek had been increasingly rude and disrespectful to his team and Boyd, for one, was fed up. Even worse, Derek was yelling at Sean, the youngest member of the team and the closet Boyd had to a younger sibling.

Beta swept his eyes over his tired, dispirited team. They had been driving nonstop for three hours, and running on little sleep ever since Boyd dragged them all out of the house to help with Derek’s rescue mission. The men were cold and shivering from the sudden downpour. They looked like men on their last legs.

Enough was enough.

“Derek, can you take a walk with me, please?” Boyd requested, tapping the angry alpha on the shoulder.

Derek did not respond, simply followed the beta into a small grove of forests a little off road.

Both men walked in silence for a few minutes before Boyd gathered up the courage to speak.

“Derek, I know you’re under a lot of stress right now, and you really want to find your omega. And I get that man.  If anything happened to Erika I would lose my mind. But my men are also people, Derek, and you’re acting really shitty to them right now.”

“I wouldn’t have to say anything if your men would just do their job. God,” Derek kicked a pebble with his foot, “How long does a damn tire change take anyway”.

“About 30 minutes” Boyd responded, “and we had only waited five before you started yelling at Sean”

“So what if I yelled at him? He’s a beta, he can take it” Derek grumbled.

“Of course he can take it Derek. It’s not like Sean comes from an abusive family with an alpha dad who beat him. It’s not like you couldn’t see the kid shivering with anxiety, and looking like he was going to cry. It’s not like you’ll have to console Sean when he can’t sleep tonight, plagued by nightmares you triggered. He’s just a beta, right?” Boyd shook with fury.

“Well, fuck you Derek. My team and I are going back to the hotel. We don’t have to help you find your omega. You can wait here for Agent Smith” Boyd stalked off toward the car.

Derek ran over to and caught up with Boyd’s retreating figure. Grabbing Boyd’s arm, Derek explained, “Look, I am sorry. I am just worried about Stiles stuck with who knows who, being,” Derek’s voice cracked, “raped or beaten or sold to someone else. It hurts me and I shouldn’t have been rude to your team”.

Boyd softened just a little bit.

“I get it, but my men have been speeding along dangerous roads for you, standing drenched in the rain on little food and no sleep. Even if you’re having a bad day, you can’t treat people as if they are disposable. Just now? My men looked ready to mutiny”

Derek passed a tired hand over his face, “I’ll apologize to all of them, Boyd.”

 “I just don’t get it,” Boyd shook his head. “Even if you catch Stiles, he won’t be back because he loves you, he’ll be there because you forced him to be there. And I don’t know about this, but do you really want to live for your entire life with an omega who hates you with every breath he takes?” Boyd asked.

Derek was irritated. “You don’t know anything about my omega. Or what I’m going through. I don’t need your advice.”

Boyd shook his head, “Whatever”

 

** Stiles **

Stiles tried to stretch out further in the crammed truck, as slick leaks Stiles

down the back of his legs. He could only breathe harshly. His abdominal muscles tensed, cramping, he needed to be filled.

He wanted Derek to make the pain go away.

“I’m here love, I’m here” he imagined the alpha’s voice saying, the soothing bass wrapping his soul in safety and warmth. The words, a cool cloth in the midst of the raging fire inside of him.

But Alpha is not here.

Stiles is in the back of a truck surrounded by five omegas who are holding their noses, trying to avoid his scent and a little girl who is looking at him curiously.

“Mama, why does he smell funny?” the girl asks.

“Don’t worry about it mija” the mother replies.

Stiles scrunches up around himself, closer

Heat, fires licking at his paper skin.

He finds himself begging through the bond. “Alpha, help me please. Please.”

He palms his dick, trying to cool down the fires that burn.

The woman turns her daughter’s face away from Stiles.

Stiles knows he should pull his fingers away. But he really needs to come. He palms his dick for a few seconds, hair trigger sensitive and the whole truck now reeks of cum. Stiles curls up and crawls to a corner of the truck, relieved by the temporary respite he has been given by the orgasm. Tries to meet the mother’s eyes. “I am so sorry senora”. She, like a stone goddess, says nothing.

When the truck stops, it’s nighttime. Stiles doesn’t know where he is. And the second wave of heat is coming, so he is fast losing his grip on who he is. The other omegas are walking out of the truck, single file, hands on their heads. One of the men, whom Stiles has never met, is holding a rifle in his left hand, eyes beady and cold.

The truck is parked out in front of a little lodge, surrounded by trees. Great. In the middle of nowhere. It’s going to be hard to escape.

Stiles is dizzy, one of the other omegas, a guy this time, pulls Stiles up from the truck floor and steadies Stiles.

Stiles is the last omega to exit the truck, he hears the door roll down behind him, the scent of freedom disappearing with it.

The man with the gun opens the door to the house, ushers all the omegas in coldly except fro Stiles.

Stiles is leaning weakly against the side of another omega, face flushed from the heat stomach heaving with the smell of strange alphas even as the slick between his legs increases. Tears blur on his eyes, only the omega who holds him offers him a solid weight.

The man with the gun smells Stiles and licks at the delicate hollow of Stile’s neck, no doubt listening to the pale pulse of his carotid artery.

“Ortiz himself has requested you”. Stiles shudders at the feeling of some alpha, any alpha pressed against him. His hole begins to leak more slick. He whines. It feels good. It feels awful.  Stiles rubs his body against the alpha, trying to be closer to that delicious scent.  He Needs it.

The man chuckles. “Hmm, you smell like a fun time. We’re going to get so much use out of you”

Stiles doesn’t register the words. He has been stripped to his bare bones, gutted of any logic or conscious thought. He is just an omega now, an omega in heat, who needs to be bred.

A thin voice comes to him out of the dark, “If you breed him tonight, he’ll die”

The voice goes on bravely, “Smell him. He’s in the last stages of bonding sickness. Any semen from a strange alpha will kill him.”

Stiles hears a clatter, the soothing arm holding him is taken away, he falls to the ground, and curls in a small sad heap.

“Seems like you’re getting to big for your britches, Alberto. Do you need to be reminded what an omega is?  Retaught your role?” the man asks menacingly. A gun glimmers against a pale white throat.

Stiles whimpers.

The omegas seemingly ignores the man’s threat.

“I can’t let you do this. Please, take me instead. Smell that kid well, doesn’t he smell a bit sickly to you. Don’t I smell better? Do you really want to lose money by killing him before you can make your money?”

A nose rubs at the hollow of Stiles’s temple, flaring.

 _Alpha,_ Stiles thinks, too gone to understand anything else.

“Fine,” the man says flatly, “but you better put on a goddamn show Alberto.”

The man muttered as he walked away.

Carefully, the young omega helps Stiles up, letting Stiles lean against him.

“Us omegas gotta stick together, “ the man says, “I’m Alberto. Hold on, you’re going to be okay”

* * *

 

Stiles is sick for about a week.

He is hot and cold and feverish. He vomits, he cries out for Derek, out for his alpha as if Derek is the only one he knows. He sobs about his father, curling up in a corner until his throat is so raw he cannot speak. The heat is unbearable, unrelenting.

 And nature has her revenge on him for so many heats, so many nights ignored.

He can’t really say much about those days, only that they lasted somewhere between a few seconds and forever. He lay, sometimes touched by cool hands, sometimes left alone for hours, a shaking had fed him something tasteless that he barely swallowed down.

When he wakes, his hair is wet, skin cooling with the relief of a broken fever. Stiles looks up into a young omegas eyes.

“Hi is your name… Derek? You were muttering it a lot. Mine’s Alberto. I’m glad you woke up”

“Me too,” Stiles says weakly and then sleeps again.

Stiles sleeps for about a day. When he wakes up he talks to Alberto. Alberto is a bit younger than Stiles, 22 to Stiles’s 28. But he’s filled with a whit and verve Stiles loves. He reminds Stiles of what he used to be like. The self-possessed, absurdly self-confident person he was before all this mess started. And Stiles likes that. He likes to know that not all of him is broken. He likes to believe these men who think so little of him as a human can never own his soul.

It isn’t long before Stiles starts trying to escape.

For his first attempt, Stiles asks to go to bathroom at mealtimes, then tries to break the window in the bathroom with a piece of wood he has pried from the floor while other omegas were sleeping.

The alpha guards, of course, hear the banging, and Stiles is apprehended, summarily whipped and sent back in stronger chains.

Stiles won’t let a stupid thing like a whipping stop him.

He knows that if he is ever sold successfully into slavery, implanted with a slave tattoo, his chances of ever getting to Paraguay are nil to zero. If he has to go, it has to be here.

It takes him two days to recover from his beating, and another two days to seduce a guard into leaving his key unattended in the midst of a routine blowjob.

Stiles pockets the key and that night, unlocks his cuffs.

But then Stiles makes his first mistake. He unlocks Alberto’s cuffs too.

Alberto refuses to just leave the other omegas lying there.

When Stiles _kindly_  explains to Alberto that it doing so would take too much time and leave them precious few minutes to escape, Alberto won’t hear of this. Alberto doesn’t seem to understand the concept of every omega for himself. He has this suicidal desire to help other omegas.

Normally, Stiles would never help such an idiot. But Alberto did kind of do him a solid by saving him from getting gang raped and maybe _killed?_  during his last heat.

Stiles doesn’t doing owing people favors. An alpha always pays his debts, you know.

And during their argument, the little girl who was so traumatized by Stiles’s jerking off episode a week and a half ago wakes up.

And then the other omegas wake up.

And before Stiles knows it, he has a roomful of begging, pleading omegas, saying “Please, for the love of your God, help me!”

And that’s how Stiles ends up in solitary confinement for another few days.

Stiles is using the peace and quiet of his short jail cell closet to think of another plan when an “alpha” guard comes into the room.

“Hey, we’re moving you guys out. We finally found a buyer for your worthless sorry ass. Aren’t you so thankful?” the man taunts.

 _This is why I refuse to remember names for these assholes,_ Stiles thinks.

“Not particularly, no” Stiles replies to the idiot.

“Is that any way to speak to an alpha?” the man asks, his smile glinting dangerously.

Stiles’s danger senses are tingling, but he ignores it, in favor of venting his frustration .

“Shut up fuckwad, You call yourself an alpha? Hell my penis is bigger than that clit you got there”

 

And that’s how Stiles ends up with a busted lip and a black eye , the  day before being sold into slavery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't feel that this is some of my best work, but tell me what you think about it.  
> It's been a crazy few months since may. graduating! starting a new job! And having not one but two family emergencies. And it feels like the inspiration just dried up.  
> Hopefully by reading your insights I'll get it back. Thanks for all of your thoughtful comments and I sincerely appreciate each and every one!


	14. Things You Cannot Take

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Derek takes a moment to sit and reflect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no warnings.

**Derek**

Derek stands at the Friendship Bridge, opened in 1965.

Underneath him beams of steel reached into the greenish muggy river, where a few boats floated. A shirt drifted along, carried by the water, a lost item from a washerwoman. He could imagine her singing to herself softly as she washed the shirt by the river banks. The Sun, above him, glittering in all its intensity hit the bridge railings with power and might, lending an unearthly beauty to each bridge support. The upside down arch of the bridge stretched wide over the river bridging the two shores together in a forced embraced. A friendship bridge is the name for any bridge linking countries separated by only a river or strait, but Brazil and Paraguay could not be farther apart. The distance from one side of the border to another, 1,812 feet was the distance from slavery to freedom for some omegas, from one world to another. And it was here that Derek had hoped to catch and find his Stiles. 

It had been a long week, after pushing Boyd’s team relentlessly to reach the Bridge, he had finally, _finally_ gotten there in record time. But Stiles was not there.

He wasn’t sure what that meant. There is a space where suddenly calculations become incorrect, futures become as difficult to see  through as cloudy skies, where even Tiresias’s blind sight cannot pierce the webs the fates have woven.

And there is where Derek stands now.

Had Stiles escaped into Paraguay already?

Maybe he never made it to the Friendship Bridge?

Or was he perhaps, about to come any day?

Derek had no way to answer these questions and no idea if he would ever know. He clutched his heart, feeling the bond burning within him. Soon, the latency period would be over. And he would die.

If he never found Stiles he would die.

And somehow the ever looming shadow of death was bringing him the clarity he had been missing all these years.

Boyd’s words kept running through his head, “ _Even if you catch Stiles, he won’t be back because he loves you, he’ll be there because you forced him to be there. And I don’t know about this, but do you really want to live for your entire life with an omega who hates you with every breath he takes?”_  

Derek had finally admitted to himself that he was naïve. He had watched so many television shows about omegas meeting their alphas at first sight and overwhelmed with joy and perfect matings. The meeting of your true mate was portrayed as a magical, fairy tale event. But real life was more complicated. You might have a mate who hated you, hated everything you stood for, who was so afraid of an alpha that he ran, risking injury and death to escape to freedom.

And he forced Stiles to stay with him, in a bond Stiles did not want, what would it make him but an enslaver? A master? A cage to struggle against?

Was that really wanted he wanted for himself? To take a mate who was so strong and witty like Stiles and force him into being a housebound omega, making cakes and pies and lunches for his alpha? Could Stiles ever be happy in such a marriage? Could he?

As he watched the river ripple, tiny glimmers of fish swimming fluidly under the water, he thought, _There are just something you cannot own. Or take. Or capture._

 Trying to hold a human is like trying to keep a tiger in a cage. Sure you can do it, but part of a tiger’s wonder is it’s viciousness, it’s ownership of the subtropical jungles, it’s eyes like fire burning like torches into the night.  The tiger strong claws and fierce teeth inspire fear, when you look into those yellow eyes, you remember that you are only human after all.

It is a savage beauty.

And so is the human spirit. Can you ever real cage a human? Can you ever enslave another soul without taking away from its beauty? Because the wonder of humanity is the choice, the free will the feet that walk onto a chosen path and forsake all others.

Why is love so amazing?

It is because the other chooses you, out of all the men or women they could possibly love, you are seen as special, most needed, most wanted.

It is love that illuminates the crevices of your being, turning the jeweled caverns into light, filling a dead sea with new water, breathing life into dry bones.

 

And these last few days, Derek had stopped running after Stiles, rushing to each new lead. He had finally had the time to think.

And he knew he wanted that kind of love. The kind that ran like a clear stream from the side of a mountain, deep, and sweet and true.

It was time for this race to end.

 

_And he knew what he needed to do._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm giving you only Derek's POV here as a standalone chapter because I think what happens here is really important. We've finally reached a turn in our narrative and a few of you will probably be able to give guesses at the ending I have planned.
> 
> After this, for a few chapters, you won't see Derek for a while.


	15. War Stories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mention of some rape/non-con. no explicit rape/non-con and nothing happens to the main character.

**Stiles**

Stiles is where he hoped to never be, sitting in a tin box in the back of a truck, a few days away from being sold into slavery.

The days are hot and blistering, he and the other omegas sit, crammed into an aluminum box, no doors or windows, nothing to breathe but stale air, nothing to hope for but dread as every moment passes. Each second was both a luxury and a cruelty, a reminder to enjoy the last free breaths they had before everything would be forever ripped away from them.

The Nights, even in Brazil were cold, so cold. The six omegas huddled together for warmth, sleeping on top of each other, the little girl Juanita, whimpering in the center of their circled arms. So cold. So cold. The omegas all shudder, quiver likes leaves jostled by a sudden wind.

Stiles doesn’t sleep often. His thoughts race across his mind like mice skittering across the floorboards when all the humans are asleep. But when he does sleep, he dreams of Theo and Derek and his dad. He dreams of everything he’s loved and lost, Felipe’s face. The wide circle of Felipe’s arms, the glory of the sunlight brushing a window pane in his room and he wonders if he’ll ever get to see any of it ever again.

When he is awake, he thinks of all the decisions he has made. He imagines a beautiful tree lit up and maps all the paths he has taken. He thinks:

_If I had just never taken that bond blocker_

_Just run away from Ortiz_

_Slept on a safer alleyway_

_Never betrayed the flag of peace_

_Never decided to runaway_

_Just accepted the bond_

_If I had only been born an **alpha**_

_I wish I had never been born_

Stiles thinks about movies and about stories. He thinks a lot. If this were a movie, like 300, or some story, he would have an amazing indomitable spirit. He would never face or feel doubt. He would be sure that he would get through slavery unscathed. Even if the master whipped him 500 times, he would rise from the dust covered in the blood of the oppressed and be free.

But he doesn’t live in that world.

He _knows_ what slavery does to omegas. Knows, even from the little he has seen of omegas with backs scarred with the whiplash, eyes dull as the living dead, voices dampened to the lowest register. He _knows_ what they do to omegas in slavery, often they castrate the male omegas ( _What good is a penis on a worthless omega?)._ Sometimes masters will cut omegan vocal strings, rendering them mute so they cannot cry as an alpha rapes them for the fiftieth time.

Stiles knows he might eventually forget what it feels like to run down a sidewalk and breathe the fresh clean air, forget what it was like to dream, sleep in his own bed, where clothes he has earned, go to work in his own car, to love his job and himself and his life. He would break down like all the rest. He was only human and he would do what he had to do to survive.

In the tin box, they get one meal a day, gruel.

They see no sunrises or sunsets, only eternal darkness. In the night, it is cold, the days are hot and long and all they can do is talk.

The other omegas talk, about their hopes and their dreams about why they risked everything to free from slavery. About what this means to them.

 The mother, Inez, clutches her daughter Juanita and explains:

 _“All my life I have known nothing more than being hurt by alphas, scrubbing floors until my fingers bled. I never learned to read or write. I wanted my daughter, Juanita to have a better life than me. To have a choice about whether she wanted to learn or go to school. To have enough food to eat. But I still didn’t want to take the risk. One day, I learned our master wanted to sell me,”_ and at this she cried, “ _away from my daughter. Send me to another farm, leaving Juanita alone on his land, with no one. I had to do something. So I ran away”_

 _“_ In _Pawagwa, mommy said every ‘mega gets a house and lots of toys and candy!”_  Juanita explained.

And so.

Lawrence, another omega, was slowly losing his vision. At 35, he was too old to be worth much, no longer beautiful and comely. He had heard the masters talking about “putting the old one down”. So he figured, he might as well make a run for it. At least he had tried.

Allison had a sister who had successfully made it to Paraguay before and hoped to meet her.

Alberto hated the suffering of omegas, he wanted to join up with the OIS, resurrect the dying remains of the “flag of peace” and work towards the freedom of all omegas.

 _“Imagine it,”_ he said, _“all omegas able to walk free on the streets, eat as we wish, work where we please. We would be able to raise our children and go to school and work without worry or suspicion. Alphas and omegas would complement each other. The way it always should have been. The way it was meant to be. And all of us would be free. Someday we would all be free.”_

 They all laughed.

Like sucking the marrow from bleached bones, so did these omegas shares tales of woe with each other, staring hard at the sadness in their lives, creasing it flat with an iron and folding it into shapes they could understand.  They watched dreams rise in the sky and destruct like supernovas leaving the dusts of eternities swirling around them.

Stiles, silent, but listening, said nothing.

But finally, on the fourth day, when they reached Volta Redonda, and by the dark of the North Star saw the sluggishly blue river flow across the plains. They prodded him, and would not let him rest.

_“I passed an alpha for 27 years. I had my own apartment, my own room, and a dad that loved him. One day I met my true mate, who was a client in my business. He was rich and powerful. But I decided to run away”_

 The other omegas stared at him in shock.

“ _You ran away from your true mate. And he was rich? He would have treated you well, loved you even as much as any omega could hope for?”_

 _“Why?_  Allison asked.

Stiles shrugged and squinted up at the ever darkening sky, dust and sweat mingling on his face.

_“No reason, I guess. I just wanted to be free”_

Lawrence, ever practical, notes, “ _Well, that was a stupid idea. You could have been happy with your true mate and had all the riches ‘n’ fines stuff. Yea, you wouldn’ be no alpha no more. But you’d a been happy. You could ave got by.”_

Stiles snarls, “ _And life a half life? I don’t think you understand, I worked so hard every day of my life, to have respect, to succeed at my job, to have a beautiful apartment that was mine. All **mine.**_ _And then one day, some stupid alpha comes to take everything away from me. My name. my things. My work. My life. And make me into some stupid omega fucktoy.To strip away my name, my titles, my work and even my mind. It was like he was killing me. Inside”_

 There is a moment of silence, and Stiles knows the other omegas just don’t understand.

He lowers his voice, “ _No, I didn’t have an alpha who raped me every night like Allison. Nor was I beaten and starved like Alberto.  No alpha told me that I would be put down soon._

 _But—”_  and here Stiles pauses, “ _there are many kinds of death "._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right in the feels.


	16. Everyone is desperate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: this chapter includes: murder.

And he leaves it at that. And the others look at him, the moment gathers time, heavy in the too hot tin car box where they are held. Waiting to be slapped with the chains of slavery.

Most of the time, Stiles never wants to allow himself to sit there. Think bad thoughts. He has to get up and get going. Theo had taught him that. But this misery settles over him like a miasma. Despite everything he is, he cannot avoid slavery. Every night, he watched the blue dark shadows play across his cage, listens to the rise and fall of the other omega breaths as he counts the day, each day brings him closer to the second death. And he had no Charon to take him over, no Orpheus to take him home.

He cannot sleep. Just this misery that sits in his stomach like a heavy stone.

He cannot eat, every morsel turns to ash in his mouth, and hunger never gnaws at him. He sees his shrinking stomach as something absent and separate from him. Like this stupid omega body isn’t even his anymore. Like these hands that are chained to the wall don’t belong to him.

For once, Stiles’s brain does not whirr, it sits there lumpy and quiet, like oatmeal, like Stiles who sits in the corner of the tin box room he know calls home and says nothing.

Rio de Janeiro holds the largest slave markets in Brazil. It used to be a place of freewheeling beauty, of carnivals and festivities where anyone, alphas, betas, omegas and those who didn’t quite fit, could come and join the parade. But now, it is haunted by the oppressive tang of slavery, people no longer greet each other on the street, on looking to the ground. The sound of metal clinks everywhere as omega slaves follow their masters obediently, eyes blank and gazing ahead.

 

** Alberto **

Juanita is huddled in a heap, no matter how much she shivers, she cannot get warm. The other omegas eye her curiously, sweat glistening along their faces. It is Alberto who speaks, “Hey, Juanita, are you cold? Come here little muchacha.” Alberto reaches out, as far as the cruel chains will let him, trying to feel Juanita’s forehead. He can only touch Juanita with the back of his hand, and what he feels is not good. Juanita is feverish. She smells of sickness, bone deep weariness that the other sensitive omegas can feel deep under their skin. Alberto likes Juanita. Juanita is spunky, innocent and sweet. She is just four years old, and doesn’t know anything about the beauty or horror in the world. His manacles are attached to the wall near the door. Alberto stretches and bangs on the door. “Help! Anyone? Juanita is really sick. Please, help.”

No one answers.

Lawrence growls, “Are you crazy? Don’t let anyone know he’s sick, they’ll kill her. Don’t you understand the way alphas think? A useless omega is as good as dead.” Lawrence scoffed, “Do you really think they’ll spend money on medical care for a worthless omega they’re going to sell anyway? No. Just keep quiet, there’s nothing we can do but hope that she makes it out alive.”

Juanita gets sicker.

By midmorning, she is sweating and shivering at the same time.

The scent of sickness becomes a miasma.

She coughs and whimpers.

Late afternoon, brings delirium, Juanita keeps crying out for, “papa. I want papa”.

She cries unceasingly, and the omegas near him have to put their hands over his mouth to quiet him down. “The owner sold her father to another farm,” Inez explains, sadly.

It is late that night, when Juanita has finally drifted off to an uneasy sleep. Inez’s yes are filled with tears. She had refused to cry when Juanita was awake, but now she was desperate, helpless to do anything but watch as her daughter slides into the abyss. She sobs, Inez, and the weary lines around her eyes become just a little deeper. “Why did I bring her with me, here? My little _Lita_ is going to die here.” And she turns her eyes to the wall, her throat heaving, crying and crying for hours, refusing to be comforted. Even Stiles wakes up from his stupor and tries to say a few words of comfort. Nothing works. No words can soothe Inez’s pain. After four or five hours, the slop fed to the omegas has come and gone. Inez makes a sound that will always linger in Albert’s soul, the sound someone makes when they can’t cry anymore. When all the tears have gone, leaving them as hollow as a dried spring. “Well, maybe it is for the best. It’s better that she dies than for her to live the rest of her life in slavery. Maybe this is a gift,” she whispers in a croaking voice.

The omegas are silent that night. No war stories.

Alberto wonders whether his dream of freeing omegas can even be possible in the midst of so much suffering.

It is the second day of Juanita’s illness that everything changes. See, the bad thing about being in a gang or well, running illegal operations at all, is that there are other gangs who tend to contest your power. And while they are driving along the windy streets to the door of Rio de Janeiro, another gang does just that.

Stiles has broken out of his self pity, Alberto notes with some satisfaction. Stiles has taken to cradling little Juanita in his arms whenever Inez is tired. He whispers stories to her about what it was like to live as an alpha.

Juanita’s delirium seems to have broken this morning, and Inez seems relieved, but wary. Without proper food or medical care, none of them are sure she will make it.

 _Tell me bout the partment, Stiiiwes_ the girl begs

_Well I had three entire rooms to myself, and a beautiful red chair and my own computer._

_What’s a compooter?_

 

And so it goes until they hear their car stop. A gun shot rings out, and then the heavy sound of return fire.

On and on and on. Juanita is scared, and she’s only four, the heavy smell of urine permeates their room as the omegas wrinkle their noses.

All the omegas, lay close to the ground, Stiles shields Juanita in his arms, Alberto feels his heart beat in his chest, _thump thump thump thump_ in double time.

At the last moment, the returning gun fire seems to be dying down, and the one of the improbable things happen.

Most of the time, we are intrinsically unlucky. Right? Crazy shit doesn’t just happen. We don’t just happen to meet someone who shares put same birthday in a room. Balls fall down, not up. Gravity remains constant.

But there are some moments, when amazing, impossible things happen. When the improbable, becomes a little bit more probable, when reality suspends itself for a second, and we catch glimpses of a world other than the world that is.

The bullet, bursts through the wall and severs Alberto’s chain.

He is free.

For a second, Alberto looks at his hands incomprehensibly. He cannot believe what has happened.

But before he can even snap out of his shock, he hear Stiles’s voice speaking, calm and low.

“If we want to escape, we don’t have much time. Listen to me. See that thin metal stick on the ground? Pick it up. Follow my directions exactly. You’re going to pick the lock, then sneak out, there has to be a weapons compartment in this truck, smugglers usually carry both guns and omegas across state lines in a two for one deal. The door will probably be left open, because we’re in a gun battle. Take three or four guns and come right back here.”

It is creepy, how cold Stiles’s voice has suddenly gotten. But Alberto doesn’t have time to think about whether to obey or not. He doesn’t have a better plan. He carefully picks the lock as per Stiles’s instructions. When he finally succeeds, it takes him about ten minutes. He hears the engine sputter of another car driving away.

Stiles closes his eyes like he’s calculating, “our chances of survival just dropped by 38.5%”

“This whole thing will never work,” Allison shakes her head, “how is he going to get the keys from our jailers? And you’re joking, no omega knows how to drive.”

“Do you have a better plan?” Stiles asks, angrily.

Allison shuts up.

In the silence that follows, the omegas shudder as they hear a heartrending yell, harsh and guttural resonating from the front of the truck.  The other omegas seem shaken by the sound, but Stiles just smiles.

One of their captors is probably seriously injured or dead.

Their odds of survival just increased by 10 percent.

“Open the door, slowly. And only leave the door a quarter open. Make little to no noise.” Stiles coaches.

Alberto opens the door to find their two captors. One is lying on the floor, bleeding from a big gunshot wound in his stomach. The other is huddling under the dashboard of the truck, trying desperately to tend to his dying friend.

A black gun, slicked in blood lies at Alberto’s feet. Probably the gun of the man who is dying.

His friend, the second jailer is too busy crooning and begging his dying buddy to hold on. He never sees Alberto

Never sees his death coming.

** Alberto **

In later years, Alberto will always be slightly haunted by that moment.

_What if he had made the other decision? Chose not to shoot?_

 He couldn’t, forever after, explain why he had picked up that gun and shot. It was like a deep, primitive part of his brain that acted on pure instinct and without emotion. Something in him had seen that scene, summed it up and chosen the best possible course of action.

Alberto likes to think of it like that, likes to imagine that it was something other than him that had chosen to fire that gun at a grieving man.

Likes to believe he had no conscious control.

The years that are coming will be red years for Alberto, he will grow comfortable with the heft and weight of the black metal in his hand, the recoil as the bullet leaves as familiar as the hug of a lover.

But this moment, as Alberto stares down at the man, He—(no, not him. It couldn’t be)—shot, will be his first kill.

 

** Stiles **

When Stiles hears the gunshot, he knows he’s screwed. Alberto is a pacifist. He doesn’t eat meat, believes killing and torturing anyone is wrong. Hell, Alberto, wouldn’t even kill the flies that circled around them as they ate their evening gruel.

So when he hears the gunshot, Stiles takes a moment to brace himself for the fact that Alberto is dead.

By the time the door opens, Stiles has slipped back into despondency. They were so close. Why couldn’t he be lucky this time? Doesn’t he deserve this much?

And Alberto walks in, covered in blood splatter.

Stiles doesn’t say anything.

He can’t because the words have flown out to some other place.

Alberto _killed_ the other jailer? But….

And as Stiles stared into Alberto’s eyes, he realized he was not the only one who was desperate.

No one else spoke.

“So, what are we waiting for?” Lawrence broke the silence.

“Throw over the keys, these cuffs are cutting off my circulation” Lawrence quipped.

Within five minutes, all the omegas have freed themselves.

Tentatively, the omegas leave their prison, the small box into which they have been confined for weeks and weeks. They blink like newborn foals, exposed to the light.

In the front driver’s seat, they see their two jailers. On is lying on the floor, a bullet wound in his stomach, intestines showing. The other had been sitting near his friend, now he is slumped and bleeding from a bullet to the head.

Alberto seems to have shut down. He says nothings, just stares ahead as he rubs his hands.

It is Lawrence that breaks them all out of their stupor.

“Well, we can’t just sit here and stare at each other? Let’s get going.”

Lawrence and Stiles take the bodies and dump them in a ditch on the road.

Stiles feels nothing about them, good or bad. These guys are simply their alpha captors who would sell them like sacks of flesh. He does not believe they deserve his pity or respect.

There are a few spare tires that need to be changed. Stiles had owned a car in college and knew the basics.

It took about 20 minutes to get everything fixed, the six omegas worked as hard and as quickly as they could.

“So who knows how to drive this thing?” Allison asked.

Stiles smiles a slow smile, “I picked up quite a lot in my time as an alpha," he says, his finger twirling the keys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meh. we're moving to a climax, I foresee in at most two chapters Stiles and Derek will meet face to face.


	17. Surrender

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The title says it all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hold on for the ride man. This is going to be intense.

**Friendship Bridge**  is a name for bridges linking countries separated by rivers or straits

 

 **I** magine you are an omega.

You’re tired, dirty, bedraggled and hungry.

You come from a country where you are worth nothing. All your life, you’ve learned that because of something simple, your dynamic, your third gender, the smell you put out, the thing in between your legs, you are something worth little, less. You are only there to look pretty. For fucking and no one thinks you are important. Your voice doesn’t matter, so you’ve stopped using it. Your feelings aren’t important, so you’ve tried to shut off the emotions, the tiny slivers of pain when people look down on you, the bitterness that resides in your soul, forever aching, like a plague of locusts eating up everything green, leaving your mind an empty desert, sucking all the oases of peace away. You might not know your mother or your father. Maybe they were sold away before you were born, maybe you could only remember a few tiny snatches of them. A face that smiled up at you, loomed large over your small figure, a voice that sung you to sleep. And that becomes one of the shards of glass that continually pricks your psyche. You don’t know what it’s like to be or do anything else. The idea of living life without carrying the oppressive weight every day. I’m an omega is strange and foreign to you. Your heart quickens, you look down at your small, omegan feet, and you are afraid.

 

But you can dream.

 

And in your dreams, there is this land out there, filled with gold and honey, a land where you can breathe free, work, find and have love. Live without being raped, without constant fear.

And you dream.

You dream of learning the words that make up your name, an education, a wealth of books, the ability to drive and dance and truly live. And you can’t understand how one tiny bridge, one small border, can seem like a crossing from one life to another.

 

You’ve left everything you’ve ever known and loved behind. Faces from the past flash in your memory, friends, fellow slaves, who all said this was not possible.

And yes, you feel so small.

 

But you have yourself, your will and your dreams.

_And that has to be enough._

 

**Stiles**

It had been a long ride from the depths of Brazil to Foz do Iguaçu. The Iguaza River swirled around sluggishly on this hot day, brown red from the dirt of the washerwomen.

They had driven all night and all day for the last 5 days. Stiles had not wanted to waste a moment, while they were sleeping, they could have easily been caught or captured. Stiles knew that just one moment of rest could mean the end of this journey for all of them. And doubtless, Alberto would be whipped for worse for killing an alpha. Stiles didn’t want to know and he didn’t care. Deep, stashed in the truck, they had discovered plentiful food. While they had been eating gruel that was barely nutritious enough to keep themselves alive, their captors had roast beef sandwiches, and sodas, chips and chicken. It made Stiles angry at first, but after the third day of no sleep, he was too tired to be angry.

Juanita’s condition improved with proper rest and food but she had nightmares. Strangely enough, it had not been the forced confinement that had traumatized her but the sight of their two captors bleeding on the truck floor. They had thrown the bodies out of the car and onto the side of the road; but Juanita was convinced that the men were “spurrits” now and would come one night to take their revenge. Inez’s eyes were sad and hard. She would place her fingers over Juanita’s mouth when she woke from nightmares screaming because they could not afford the noise, or the extra attention.

Alberto no longer spoke much. The light had gone out of his friend’s eyes and it saddened Stiles.

He knew, as Theo had once said, it was a dog eat dog world and this should be great, Alberto had toughened up, he was an omega, he couldn’t afford to be weak. But well, it seemed that Alberto had lost something when he’d lost this innocence, like this halo of sunshine and joy around him was lost. And Stiles had to admit to himself, even privately that he missed that quiet joy.

By the third afternoon, Stile’s hands gripped the wheel tightly. No sleep. His head felt like cotton. His eyes, so heavy he could barely see. Everything jittered, his stomach roared with queasiness.

But no one else knew how to drive.

It wasn’t until Stiles had almost hit another truck and nearly set off a major explosion that they all realized something would have to give.

It was Lawrence who volunteered, “Look, dear, you can’t go on like this. Why don’t you give me a crash course in driving? Let me try to help.”

And so Stiles explained what the breaks and accelerators were, how to turn. And signal turns. Thank God, Lawrence was a quick learner or else they’d all have been doomed.

Allison, had managed to secretly learn a little of reading and education, could direct Lawrence where to go and how to turn.

So while Stiles couldn’t get the 12 hour sleep he needed, he did get something. And every little bit helped.

And it was through this teamwork that they managed to get to the Friendship Bridge. The traffic on the way to the bridge was terrible. Up ahead, Stiles could hear men and women screaming in anger, police sirens screeching. All the cars were stuck in a traffic jam, so Stiles kicked moping Alberto out of the car and sent him to scout ahead.

Ahead the bridge was closed, and every single inch of the road was crawling with OCS agents, their jackets black as doom, silver buttons glittering.  The OCS agents were checking every car for stray omegas. And Stiles’s heart dropped into his stomach.

The omegas around him reeked of terror and despair, the few tendrils of hope that had brightened the truck were crushed mercilessly. Juanita began to cry.

Like a disembodied ghost, a voice he knew rose up to meet him.

 _“Hello Stiles, my runaway mate”_   Derek whispered.

 

  **Derek**

Derek knew the exact moment Stiles entered the vicinity. He had been honing himself into Stiles’s aura lately, could scent the sweet apple tartness, the zest of life that he associated with Stiles. His brush of Stiles’s mind was almost like a caress.

 _And so we meet again,_ Derek noted.

Stiles screamed. It was such a harsh guttural yell of frustration and anger, echoing with something  that was nearly hate.

_Why can’t you leave me alone? Why can’t you let me be?_

Stiles could feel Derek’s sigh.

_Can you come out? I want to talk to you, just once. Please._

_No,_ Stiles replied, _I will never give myself up._

 The OCS agents came closer.

And Stiles looked down at his fellow omegas, Alberto, scared, yet so brave and determined, resigned to his fate. Lawrence, who despite his age, had learned how to drive, who just wanted to get surgery so he could see. He looked at Allison, who was whiny, and yet resolute. Inez, who clung to her shaking daughter. Inside Juanita’s bright eyes, he saw his dreams reflected within her like an unbroken mirror.

And see, this, is it.

Stiles has been selfish all his life.

Ever since Theo, Stiles has talked to no other omegas, it has always been about him, him, him. He rarely loved anyone. Stiles had thought he loved Felipe, but he had never been ready to die for Felipe, never ready to sacrifice for him. Hell, he never even told Felipe the truth of who he was.

Stiles loves himself more than anything. His survival. He has a wall between himself and his emotions. doesn't let himself fell anything about all the other useless omegas he’s used. The stupid one that slept under his desk at the old office in Baroff &Sons, sucking him off, warming his dick.

And see, Stiles realizes as he looks into the weary, dirty faces of his traveling companions that sometime during this trip, a crack in his walls had widened, a fissure had become a breach, and his carefully constructed walls had come tumbling down.

He looked into their faces and knew. Knew without a doubt that if not for luck, and a police officer father who had not been as incorruptible as he pretended to be, he would be one of them, unable to read, to drive, knowing only a relentless life of slavery and toil.

All this time, he had been lying to himself.

He was _not_ an _alpha._

He _was_ an **omega.**

 And when those floodgates opened wide, he found himself almost sick.

When he had that omega suck him off…….what had he done?

He was no better than any of the other alphas. No better than anything he claimed to fight against. He felt dirty. His cheeks were wet but he had no idea why. He hadn’t been crying. He rested his head on the steering wheel.

 

Alberto stared at Stiles, obviously confused by the tears, “Hold it together, this is not the time to fall apart. There may still be a way out of this” he cautioned.

Stiles wiped his cheek with the back of his arm.

There was at least one thing he could do.

.

 

**Derek**

 Derek could feel a sea change occurring in his mate, something, barely perceptible had disturbed his mate’s equilibrium. Derek felt the emotions viscerally, roiling self-hate, a grudging affection, resolve, protectiveness.

Derek was thinking about how to approach his fragile mate when he heard Stile’s voice.

“Call your men off, Derek. I’m not going to run from you anymore. I’ll be your m-m,” and here Stiles’s voice cracked _,_ “I’ll be your mate. But I have a bunch of omegas with me, and I want them to get to Paraguay and be free. I’m begging you Derek, grant me this one last wish. Let them through and I’ll give myself up”

“What are you doing?” Lawrence asked the silent Stiles whose face was still streaked with tears.

“I’m putting an end to all of this” Stiles said, resolutely, “the way I should have from the beginning”

Lawrence looked alarmed.

“You sound like you’re going to kill yourself” Lawrence noted shakily.

Stiles swallowed.

“Don’t worry about me”.

Up ahead of them, the OCS parted like a red sea.

All the agents moved to the side and the cars were cleared, an empty bridge awaited.

“W-What is happening?” Allison questioned.

“All the OCS agents are moving to the side…. But why?” Alberto said, as if asking himself, “why?”

Stiles said nothing, just grimly stared ahead.

“Don’t the mwen in bwack hurt ‘megas?” Juanita asked.

“Sh-h”, Inez whispered, her eyes wide.

And for five minutes they drove in complete silence. For all the occupants in that car, it was almost a surreal moment.

If you looked from above, all you would see is two silent rows of men stretching from one edge of the bridge to another, almost like a royal guard, watching in silence as a white truck drove slowly by.

 

Stiles stopped a few inches short of the border.

 He opened the door.

Tentatively, Inez, Juanita, Allison, Alberto and Lawrence stepped out. One after another in single file.

They stood, looking at each other and at Stiles, who had been their leader for most of this long trip.

“This is where I stop. You guys have to go?”

“But why isn’t Stwiyes coming wit us?” Juanita asked.

“My alpha is the one who put all those OCS agents at the bridge. I explained to him that I would go to him, willingly, if he let you all go free.”

His words hung in the air.

“No” Alberto yelled, “No. Why are you giving up without a fight? This isn’t the Stiles I know. How could you? You were the one who I looked up to. I thought you left him because you wanted more for yourself. Wanted freedom.” Alberto, clutched the glock in his pocket.

“It’s not too late”, Alberto begged, grabbing onto Stiles’s hand in a fierce grip. “Come with us. Don’t give up. Please. It’s just one step.”

Stiles looked at Alberto as if from far away, “I can’t Alberto, I can’t.”

The other OCS agents became restless, poking Alberto with the butt of a rifle, one agent said, “Enough goodbyes, get out of here, before we kill every last one of you vermin.”

The border was nothing but a line on the ground. A step off from the asphalt road.

But it may as well been the difference between heaven and earth. That one step meant a transformation.

_freedom_

 As they left, Juanita well—Juanita sobbed.

Juanita sobbed. “Why isn’t Stiwes coming? I want him with us. Please. No, I don’t want to leave Stiwyes. No. no. no. no.”

Alberto swore, “I’ll come back for you Stiles. One day. I promise”

Lawrence just seemed sad.

One by one the omegas walked away. Took the step. Were transformed. made anew. They walked into the distance and Stiles strained to see them until he couldn’t anymore.

 

He felt like his heart would wander, forever lost somewhere at that endless border.

 

Stiles turned back to Derek, who stood, tall against the sky.

He walked back to stare at Derek eye to eye.

 

_So. I guess you’ve won_

_I surrender._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/82/c4/d2/82c4d29a5aa5eefa6795fc2638a3f3f5.jpg


	18. Author's note

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quick note.

**Author’s Note**

I originally planned to continue more of the story here.

But as I sat to write more,   (Lizu) this commenter’s words kind of echoed in my head.

She said, “Consider ending this story here.”

And my first thought was like “hello, excuse me?  Who are you? This is my story”

But then I re-read this chapter and I realized that she was right.  This “surrender” feels like an ending. Stiles has gone through so many changes, he’s gone from an omega who is hiding his own identity to someone who is fragile and vulnerable and loving all at one. An omega who is not afraid of who he is or his shadow anymore.

 

So I’m going to end this arc here.

Which doesn’t mean it’s over.

I’m splitting this story into two parts, the second part will be more from Derek’s part of view. We’ll get to see what makes him tick, and see Derek and Stile’s relationship deepen.

 The second part will be called _Ritornello._

I’ll be posting the first chapter in a few days.

I hope to see you all there

**[Here is part 2](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4934761/chapters/11323702) **


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